Internship with the Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation - Final Report
Amanda Montague-Reinholdt
August 18, 2010
I have now reached the end of my summer working with the Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation (CERA), an organization with offices in Ottawa and Toronto that is dedicated to ending discrimination and promoting human rights in relation to housing. CERA has a broad and diverse mandate, which includes research, public education, advocacy, litigation and client casework. CERA is also unique among Canadian organizations, because it incorporates international human rights law in all areas of its work. Just as the work performed at CERA is diverse, so was my experience for the summer - I have had the opportunity to do engaging and challenging international human rights work at the international, national, and local levels.
CERA is dedicated to promoting compliance with Canada’s international human rights obligations, and that advocacy takes place on a variety of levels - each of which I have had the opportunity to play a role in. In order to assist CERA in exploring options to hold Canada accountable on the international stage, I have prepared memos on the various international complaint mechanisms available within the United Nations system. I also had an incredible opportunity to play a key role in researching and drafting a submission to the Rapporteurship on the Rights of Women at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The submission offered an account of the current state of women’s economic and social rights in Canada, with a focus on access to housing and social assistance.
CERA also works to promote human rights at the national level, through public awareness, advocacy, and strategic litigation. As part of this work, CERA’s partner organization, the Charter Committee on Poverty Issues, is currently intervening in a case that seeks to have the social condition of poverty and receipt of social assistance recognized as analogous grounds of discrimination under s. 15 of the Charter. In preparation for the upcoming hearing at the Federal Court of Appeal, I was able to assist in research for this intervention, as well as the drafting of the factum.
CERA is also currently breaking largely new ground in advocating for greater attention to international human rights law at the provincial level. For the last month of my internship with CERA, I assisted in the development of an exciting new project to assist lawyers and advocates across Ontario in applying international human rights law in their work. Funded by the Law Foundation of Ontario, this project is designed to increase awareness in the legal field about the nature of Ontario’s international human rights obligations, and ways in which those obligations can be enforced through domestic law. For my portion of the project, I helped create an online inventory of the major legislation implementing economic and social rights in Ontario, and conducted research with the object of creating accessible, easy-to-understand information on how to interpret domestic statutes with reference to international human rights norms.
Over the course of the summer, I also had the opportunity to engage in several interesting side projects that related to exploring future potential work for CERA, or monitoring and promoting CERA’s recent and current work. I researched and drafted a memo on performing budget analysis through a human rights framework, an area in which CERA may become involved in the future. I also conducted research on recent actions and issues receiving attention related to women’s economic and social rights, within the United Nations and among non-governmental organizations worldwide. Finally, I designed and produced a newsletter for the Women’s Housing Equality Network, a program developed by CERA. Through this newsletter, I was able to connect the member organizations with one another, keeping them up to date on what each organization has been working on this year.
Throughout the summer, while working on these projects, one constant part of my internship was to engage in human rights casework with clients. CERA assists hundreds of individuals and families every year, who have, for example, been denied housing, evicted, or denied accommodation for a disability, in violation of the Ontario Human Rights Code. CERA advocates on behalf of these individuals to help them gain access to housing without discrimination, and assists them in making complaints to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario. Assisting in this area of CERA’s work was challenging and rewarding. I participated in client intake, determining whether CERA could assist the clients with their reported problems, or referring them to legal clinics and other community services. For those facing discrimination, I offered information and summary advice on the Human Rights Code. I advocated on clients’ behalf to landlords, property managers, and lawyers, to see if a resolution could be reached. I also prepared letters of support for clients, outlining their rights and landlords’ obligations under the Code. While I was not with CERA long enough to see any cases all the way through to mediations or hearings at the Tribunal, it was an excellent learning experience nonetheless to gain insight into the various forms of discrimination faced by Ontarians in relation to housing.
Having reached the end of a busy summer, I have not come away with any single impression of working with an organization like CERA. I see that there are opportunities to spend a dynamic career working in the field of international human rights, even if one chooses to spend that career entirely within Canadian borders. I also see that such a career faces many challenges - from the more philosophical challenges of how to reach the public on important human rights issues, to more pragmatic challenges of how to keep a public interest organization afloat financially from year to year. Finally, I see, after working alongside the amazing staff and volunteers at CERA, that this kind of career takes the sort of heart and dedication to which we should all aspire.