Introduction 

Yvette: Hello Everyone, and welcome to episode 3 of The Equalizer. My name is Yvette and I am joined by my colleague and friend Nayantara. Nayantara and I are completing our Master’s in Public Policy at McGill University’s Max Bell School of Public Policy. Max Bell School has supported us throughout the production of this podcast, helping us engage in important conversations with policy experts, civil society leaders, and other professionals on creating policy solutions that empower, humanize, and better bridge the gap between expectations and reality. 

In this episode, we have Alex Neve. Alex has dedicated his life advocating for human rights as a litigator, activist, teacher, and the Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada. He is committed to building a world in which the human rights of all people are protected, demanding nothing less from governments, world leaders, and society at large. From carrying out various human rights research missions throughout the world to speaking to various audiences about human rights issues, and serving as a member of the Immigration and Refugee Board, Alex has worn many hats. Glad to have you here.  

Nayantara: Hello Alex, and yes, as Yvette said we are very happy to have you here with us today.  

Questions 

1. Nayantara: To start, can you please share with us some of the work you have done to advocate for Human Rights.    

Alex: The easiest way to sum it up is to say that everything, my education, my activism, and certainly my professional career, has been focused on one simple truth and that's the passionate belief that human rights are universal. But the grim reality is that in practice human rights are anything but universal. Here in Canada and around the world every single day millions, in fact often billions of people, are denied their rights. So from an early stage when I first started to really get engaged with the human rights framework, especially the international human rights framework, back when I was in law school at Dalhousie, I was really attracted to the notion of human rights. All of the norms and principles which states, not us activists, have developed over the decades really provide us the ultimate and most important policy framework of all. So I've pursued that as a practicing lawyer. I've worked as a refugee lawyer for instance, in both private practices and in a community legal aid clinic. I've certainly worked academically as visiting and adjunct professor at Osgoode Law School at the University of Ottawa, and at Dalhousie. I've had opportunities to be engaged at a grassroots level establishing, for instance, a shelter for refugee claimants in Toronto. But, I guess most significantly it has been until recently almost 21 years of serving as the Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada. This role was very much focused on the outward-facing and external aspects of Amnesty International, including campaigning, public education, advocacy, lobbying, and awareness building whether that be in front of parliamentarians, public audiences, or the media. This work has certainly been across Canada but also around the world and always through research, campaigning, and advocacy initiatives that come back to basic standards in international human rights instruments.   

2.  Yvette: Your work has been extremely inspiring. It is clear to see you have really dedicated your life to this.   

Alex: That’s very kind of you to say. But, what I would note is that it never individual or singular. Whatever you find inspiring in what I have done or contributed to, every single time there was a multitude of others that were a part of that initiative. Sometimes because of my role, I may have been the public face or the one who took the lead but the essential thing to remember on how to pursue human rights policymaking is that it always has to be collective, community-based, and in solidarity.  

3. Yvette: That’s really the power of the collective. That is the foundation of all human rights work. Can you tell us about the international instruments that you have relied on to inform your perspective as an advocate, lawyer, and Secretary General for Amnesty International?  

Alex: It always starts for me with where the international human rights system really began and that's back in 1948. So over 72 years ago now, states adopted the Universal Declaration of Human rights. It was the first time that governments globally had really put words to paper in terms of not only what a stirring human rights vision is but a set of clear promises and commitments from governments to their people about rights and rights protection. Almost always when I'm pursuing a new campaign or preparing for a speech, I'll often start there. I often like to quote a relevant article from the Universal Declaration, for instance, as a hook to whatever the main message is. It certainly doesn't end there because, over the 72 plus years, states have adopted a mountain of other conventions, declarations, treaties, principles, and resolutions all of which built on the Universal Declaration.     

There's the two big international covenants, one on civil and political rights and the other on economic, social, and cultural rights. There are treaties dealing with racial discrimination, discrimination against women, the rights of children, torture, migrant workers, the right to people living with disabilities, and enforced disappearances. For Canada, and I think particularly these days, a very important and newer international instrument which was only adopted by the UN back in 2007, is the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This declaration obviously frames unquestionably what Canada's most disgraceful and important human rights challenge is: the rights of Indigenous peoples across the country. The list can go on but the important thing to highlight is that in some respects we're reaching a point where we've got the instruments we need, there's been so much work over these decades in drafting these documents, getting them adopted at the UN and other bodies, and where we really need to be focused now is what do we do about it? It's lovely to have all these beautiful words on paper but if they just remain words on paper and go nowhere beyond that then what's the point? I think our agenda going forward isn't so much on drafting but its enforcement and implementation.     

4.  Yvette: How can we hold states accountable to the international instruments they have signed on to?    

Alex: It is easy to sign on. If we had time to go through the list of which countries have signed on to which treaties I don't know whether we would want to laugh or cry. We see countries that have some of the worst records in the world when it comes to the rights of women, for instance, gleefully sign on to the UN Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. Similarly when it comes to racial discrimination etc. That's because largely we have an international system that's made it easy for states to sign on because there's very little consequence if they fail to comply with the obligations that they have assumed. So that's where we come in because we need to increase that pressure.   

There's a couple of aspects to that. One is just what we do as campaigners and advocates, which is to make the governments really uncomfortable so that it isn't so easy to just get away with it. Find ways to make it hurt for governments when they continue to contravene and ignore the human rights obligations.     

The second is that we do need to pursue reforms. We need to strengthen the mechanisms, both at the United Nations but even within our own country, to ensure that there are processes in place that have real teeth in them and will ensure that there's not just a shrug of the shoulders if a state violates its human rights obligations. There should be a penalty, a consequence, and accountability. But this is going to take change, because while in the last couple of decades there has been some improvement, the International Criminal Court for instance is a good example, which does ensure that there is an increasing degree of accountability for wrongdoers, we've got far far to go.    

5. Nayantara: The difference between international instruments and national legislation is that international instruments are not enforceable whereas national legislation is. We see the disconnect that you were talking about where countries sign on to UN instruments but the UN itself has no power to hold them accountable and the international instruments are not reflected in their domestic legislation. Kenya has a clause in their constitution that allows international instruments signed on by their representatives to be solidified into their legislation and needs to be followed. Could Canada adopt a similar approach to legislation?  

Alex: There are a couple of aspects to that. You have identified one of the central challenges we have in Canada when it comes to living up to our international human rights obligations. Canadians like to think and many people around the world assume that Canada is the good guy when it comes to living up to human rights obligations. But for the very reason that you've just highlighted, the fact that we have a legal system that does not make those international standards automatically and directly enforceable within our own legal system leaves a big gap. Even though we may not be a country in the midst of massive armed conflicts and thousands of people being killed daily, we have very serious and systemic challenges. For example, the rights of Indigenous peoples, anti-Black racism, and other concerns. We need, therefore, to ensure that Canada's living up to those international obligations.    

I think it would be not such an easy fix to get Canada to simply change our legal system and overnight decide the international treaties that we've signed onto are from this point forward considered to be automatically part of the law of the land. This is because it’s not just about human rights obligations, it’s about trade and military treaties and the whole vast array of treaties that Canada would enter into. I might like to see it that way but I don't think it will. So I think in the short run we're faced with the need, especially related to important international treaties, to put the pressure on the government to take an extra step of passing legislation that will specifically adopt and incorporate that treaty or this declaration into Canadian law. As you noted we've just been through that with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which less than a week ago now, was finally adopted by parliament. It has entered into force the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act and that's a huge step forward because we've rarely seen Canada take that kind of an all-encompassing step of adopting specific legislation that incorporates the totality of an international human rights instrument into Canadian law. It would be great to see that happen with other conventions and other treaties going forward and I think it may well give us an important model to build on.     

6. Nayantara: A lot of your work has also focused on refugee protection. Canada’s system for the detention of immigrants has recently garnered more attention with the release of a joint report by the Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International describing the experiences of those detained in Canadian immigration holding centers. What are your thoughts on how the Canadian government treats immigration detainees?    

Alex: This report is a very significant one. I think it's very notable that the two organizations joined together to carry out this research and launch it. They are arguably the two largest human rights organizations in the world and having the two of them come together sends a strong message about how serious this human rights concern is. We delude ourselves in Canada into consistently thinking that we've just got this supreme record when it comes to refugee protection and how immigrants and migrants are treated. This is the land where Prime Minister Trudeau’s famous tweet originates from a number of years ago, “refugees welcome here”. I don't want to say that there's no validity to some aspects of that. There are certainly some remarkable moments, recently the 2016 incredible nationwide program to resettle 40,000 or so Syrian refugees for instance. But, when you view things in a global way, we have very little to be proud about. Partially because we've never really been tested. We are so far from the front lines of refugee flows and migrant journeys that very few people even make it of their own volition to Canada in the first place.     

So a lot of the issues around enforcement and what to do with the border and detention, which have become such egregious human rights problems in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere, haven't risen to the surface to our collective awareness in Canada in the same way. We often have this smug tendency as Canadians on a lot of these issues, for instance, racism. We compare ourselves to the United States where all things are so much more terrible than the United States. Kids in cages? Boy, we don't do that here, we are the good guys. This report in a very stark way says, “wait a minute, there's nothing to be proud of when it comes to how Canada treats refugees and immigrants in detention.”     

In a whole host of ways including the conditions in the detention centers, the racism and discrimination that enters into how detention is carried out, the very callous and harsh treatment of detainees with mental health problems, and the fact that many people held in immigration detention can be held indefinitely. The report refers, for instance, to one person with mental health problems where their immigration detention extended to 11 years but never knew from one day to the next as to whether that was going to be the end of it or next week was going to be the end of it. Imagine how agonizing that is.     

All of this in a system that lacks any proper oversight. The Canadian Border Services Agency, which is the government agency responsible for immigration detention in Canada, is the only significant law enforcement force in Canada that doesn't have a significant independent oversight body in place. They are literally not accountable for the many injustices and abuses that happen.     

So very timely and very important that this report has come out and I think we all need to maintain the pressure on the government to make sure that the recommendations are taken up.   

7. Yvette: In reading through that report, there are many concerns that need to be addressed. For example, it mentions the fact that the majority of those detained the longest come from African backgrounds or have mental health issues. There just seems to be so many fronts on which we need to exert pressure on the government. How do we sustain this in the long term? How do we really move forward?  

Alex: Well, we certainly continue to keep focused on a human rights framework. I think that, if there’s one thing that I've learned over my decades of advocacy, it’s the fact that you name a problem, including some of the newer global challenges we’re dealing with like the climate crisis. Any of that can and should be brought back to a human rights framework. So, I think that as a starting point, we don’t need to be reinventing new approaches or new understandings or obligations or norms that keep coming back to what governments have already committed to. Certainly, going back to something we were speaking about at the outset, that need for working collectively, to be in solidarity. I think that's more important than ever. And I think it's an important answer to your question about how do you cope? And, how do you choose? If we can increase our numbers, if we can build stronger linkages across communities and across issues, we've got more resilience and strength to take on more and to be more effective.   

And I think we're seeing that increasingly. Certainly, from a human rights perspective. When I think that 20 years ago, the number of times we would have linked up with an environmental group for instance in a Human Rights campaign, next to never. But nowadays for human rights groups, I think for civil society groups at large, it's the starting point: who do we do this with? And I think we just need to do that increasingly. And then third, to go back to something else we were talking about, really focusing on this issue around enforcement and implementation. I mean, yes, a campaign that builds awareness and reminds people about what human rights are all about is important, let's never give up on that. But we do need to dig down deep, and it may mean sometimes we just focus in on your one area where we feel we can have one small victory, but a small victory that is all about concrete enforcement of a human rights obligation, something which we can then build on and then build on again and again. That's going to take creativity. It's going to take new perspectives. That's why I think young activists and scholars coming into the policymaking space will have a lot to offer in that regard. Because we don't want to just stick with tired approaches from years and decades past. We need to take some new ways forward.  

8. Yvette: For the most part, Canada doesn’t have any comprehensive race-based data collection that can serve to support claims of systemic racism in many areas, which makes evidence-based policymaking extremely difficult. What can or should be done in order to pressure governments to begin collecting race-based data in different sectors?  

I’m glad that you brought that up. It’s a huge issue. Very notably, you have very importantly highlighted race-based data but it beyond that. It's gender-based data, its Indigenous-based data, it's disability-based data, it's poverty-based data. We have very poor data across the board in Canada which really disaggregates how does policing impact different communities? What are the health outcomes for different communities? What does homelessness look like for different communities? Let alone, when you start to look for the points of intersection across those different identities or across those different human rights issues. It's a sophisticated but vitally important data need. It's very notable that for years when various UN human rights committees, experts, and bodies have been carrying out their regular reviews of Canada's human rights record, something that all states go through, this issue comes up time and time again. UN experts are increasingly expressing their own frustration about the lack of data. Because without the data, number one, you can't really properly and fully diagnose the human rights problem. But very importantly, you're not going to be able to properly identify the best human rights solution. So, it may not seem like the most exciting of human rights rallying cries: “What do we want? Data! When do we want it? Now!” But I think it's hugely important and any opportunity, whether it's at the federal government level with provincial or territorial governments but also with municipal governments, to put that in front of them and not just say we'd like it, but to very specifically say what are you going to do to make sure we get it? This has to be at the forefront of our advocacy.    

9. Nayantara: Alex when you were saying that, I think, at least, this is just my understanding and my hypothesis, the reason there has not been this eagerness from the government to collect data is because they know that they’re doing something wrong and the moment they provide evidence for it, it can be used against them, right? So, to what extent do you think that holds true?    

Oh absolutely, data is all about transparency. Data is all about shining the light on realities that would otherwise not be known, right? And it is much easier for governments to keep that hidden away. And if the data is available, if the data speaks to these human rights truths, then, number one, there’s greater discomfort for the governments that are responsible for those shortcomings. But secondly, it increases and ultimately makes it inescapable for governments that they need to do something about it. The data can’t just sit there without a response. So, absolutely. No data makes things much easier for governments.      

But, the flip side of that is, let’s give a bit of credit to governments. And I think we’ve seen this to a certain degree during COVID, governments do pursue social programs, we’ve certainly seen an enormous amount of that during the billions and billions of dollars that have been spent as part of the COVID response. And while it isn’t always given, human rights as the headline or in the title of a particular policy or program, it often is very much about human rights. We’ve seen initiatives, for instance, dealing with increased concerns about domestic violence in COVID times. There certainly have been a number of initiatives trying to focus on marginalized communities at greater risk of both, the health aspects of COVID and the economic hardship of COVID. And you know it really would be in government interests, therefore, given that they are pursuing a policy in those spaces, give yourselves the data, so that you’re making sure. I mean our biggest concern, of course, is that they are going to be pursuing policies that are just and rights-based but data also makes it possible to ensure that you are designing policies and programs that are as efficient, cost-effective, and have positive outcomes, as possible. And that’s something any decent government should aspire to.    

10. Nayantara: I see civil society organizations as potential leaders in pressuring the governments to pursue accountability mechanisms that you have touched upon. What role do you see civil society organizations having in pushing for this change? Is it limited to, researching, reporting, and holding government and businesses accountable through the written pieces that are published? Or are there other efforts that you think civil society should prioritize when trying to have reform towards more rights-based policymaking?     

Alex: Make no mistake, civil society is key, in fact, I would say civil society is THE key. I think any significant advance we've seen, with respect to human rights, going back from 1948 and the Universal Declaration forward, the engine behind it has been civil society, large groups, small groups, global groups, and local community-based groups. I don't think there's any significant change we've seen that would have happened but for the efforts, engagement, and involvement of civil society. If anything that's only becoming increasingly so because civil society is becoming richer, more diverse, more global, more effective, more powerful. And yes, it is absolutely the thing you're talking about. You know, different civil society groups have different focuses, mandates, areas of expertise. Some are very focused on research, and some are very focused on gathering facts and evidence, some are very focused on legal analysis, some primarily leave the research and analysis to others and focus on campaigning and advocacy. Others are all about mobilizing, educating, and building awareness. Some are about service delivery. Civil society is also about organizations that are out there filling the gap when governments aren't living up to their obligations to ensure that people have enough food, for instance. So, all of that matters and I think it's important that we have organizations that have all of those different areas of focus. The linkages between civil society groups, therefore, become so very important so that our efforts are complementing and reinforcing each other. Everywhere we possibly can, we're finding strength in numbers because we know that makes a difference. We're having ongoing engagement and dialogue across the entirety of civil society to keep refreshing our understandings of rights, to keep updating our tactics and strategies, to draw upon younger, newer, more diverse perspectives and voices that will have different ideas about how to advance the human rights struggle. That's what is certainly going to keep things vibrant. But that's also what is going to increase our effectiveness.  

11. Nayantara: Thank you so much, Alex. Yvette and I have learned a lot about the theoretical side of a human rights-based approach, but in talking with you we have come to understand a little bit more about its practical application. We wanted to give you the chance now to provide some advice. Our target population for this podcast is the new generation of young policymakers like ourselves. What is a piece of advice that you could offer this group of policymakers looking to disrupt the status quo and bring about innovative and creative approaches to policymaking and problem-solving?   

Alex: Oh, bring it on! I mean, I think I think I've referenced this a couple of times that we have to move away from any assumption that kind of the old guard or folks like me who have been doing advocacy in this policy space for decades have it all figured. Far from it. And I think in some respects you know we have sometimes reached what feels like brick walls in terms of our own ideas and efforts and how to advance something. So, I think my primary advice would be never to undersell yourself. I know it can sometimes be intimidating, especially, you know, when you're just starting out and you're sitting around the table with someone who's got 30, 40, 50 years of experience, but you've got a viewpoint that never occurred to them. You have an experience that isn't at all part of their reality and those are incredibly rich and important contributions to policymaking space. Policymaking is at its best when we open it up for innovation, change, and transformation and I think young policymakers like the two of you are absolutely the epitome of that.  

Wrap-Up 

Nayantara: Thank You Alex for joining us today and sharing your insights with us on a human rights-based approach to policymaking. It has been a true pleasure.  

Alex: Thank you for this. Thank you for having reached out. I enjoyed it. As I said, you did a great job and I wish you well with the podcast in general. It’s a great initiative. 

That’s all for our conversation with Alex. Thank you all for tuning in. It is our hope that after listening to our conversation with Alex you have learned of a more inclusive, equitable, and rights-based approach to policymaking. This was our last conversation for this season. We hope you join us this Fall at the Max Bell School of Public Policy, McGill University, to continue exploring how policies can be the great equalizer.