The government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, which passed its 10-year mark in office in 2024, has made progress in advancing human rights at home and abroad in some areas but continues to fall short in others. Ongoing concerns include systemic racism and abuses against Indigenous peoples, the impacts of climate change, and transnational repression by third countries that threaten diaspora communities.
Indigenous Peoples’ Rights
In a landmark ruling in July, the Supreme Court of Canada found both the federal and provincial government in breach of a 174-year-old agreement with several First Nations in Ontario, depriving generations of Indigenous people fair compensation for their resources.
In a report in March, the Auditor General of Canada detailed government failures to address service gaps in First Nations and Inuit-led policing programs and funding shortfalls in First Nations housing.
In June, the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) released a progress report on the fifth anniversary of the release of the final report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. The report found that only two of the inquiry’s 231 recommendations had been fully implemented, with most showing limited or no progress.
In its 2024 budget, the Trudeau government pledged an additional US$6.6 (CDN$9) billion in funding for Indigenous communities over the next five years to support child and family services, health, education, housing, and community infrastructure. However, in a report released in April, the AFN estimated the cost of closing the infrastructure gap between First Nations and non-Indigenous communities at nearly US $254 (CDN$350) billion, encompassing housing, schools, water plants, roads, and other infrastructure.
In April, following a visit to Canada, the UN special rapporteur on the right to water and sanitation urged the government to address discrimination against, and marginalization of, Indigenous communities by addressing water advisories (indicating drinking water is unsafe), toxic contamination, and the criminalization of water defenders.
After its visit in May, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, despite acknowledging the positive systems in place to avoid arbitrary detention, expressed concerns about “disproportionately high rates of Indigenous Peoples in criminal justice detention” in Canada.
In October, Canada was reviewed by the UN Committee on the Elimination of All Forms Against Women. The Committee reported a lack of effective involvement of Indigenous women in the development of gender equality policies, significant barriers to participation in public life, persistent harmful stereotypes and practices, and an increase in the number of cases of gender-based violence, particularly affecting Indigenous women.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights held a public hearing in July with members of the Grassy Narrows First Nation in Ontario calling for justice and reparations for decades of mercury poisoning that contaminated the community’s watershed and fisheries.
Environment and Human Rights
In June 2024, the Trudeau government adopted a long-awaited law that obligates the federal government to develop a national strategy to prevent and address the effects of environmental racism.
Canada experiences widespread impacts from global warming, including more frequent severe heat waves and a shrinking of ice cover in the Arctic. Driven by hot and dry weather, the huge forest fires that ripped through Canada in 2023 were followed by another year of above-normal burning, with more than 5 million hectares up in flames in 2024.
Canada remains one of the world’s largest per capita greenhouse gas emitters, contributing to the climate crisis and its growing toll around the globe. Extraction of oil from the massive Canadian oil sands is among the most carbon-intensive and polluting oil production methods in the world. Federal and provincial support for increasing fossil fuel production disregards the human rights obligation to adopt and implement robust climate mitigation policies. In August, the Trudeau government announced the launch of a 10-year study to research the long-term health and environmental impacts of potential contaminants from oil sands operations in the province of Alberta.
Some expansion of oil and gas production faces significant resistance, including where it is transported across First Nations’ lands. For example, hereditary chiefs of the Indigenous Wet’suwet’en Nation have long opposed the construction of a natural gas pipeline through their land in central British Columbia. In July 2024, Chief Dsta’hyl of the Wet’suwet’en Nation became the first person in Canada to be designated by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience after he was sentenced to 60 days’ house arrest after being convicted of criminal contempt while peacefully protesting the construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline.
Transnational Repression
In May, a public inquiry into foreign interference in Canadian elections released an initial report that found that foreign interference undermined the right of voters to have an electoral process “free from coercion or covert influence.” Following the release of the report, new legislation (Bill C-70) was proposed, creating a mandatory registry for people undertaking “influence activity” on behalf of foreign states and giving the Canadian Security Intelligence Service expanded powers to address threats. In June, the Senate passed Bill C-70 without amendment, despite concerns by civil liberties groups that several of the bill’s provisions would “significantly impact the rights and liberties of people in Canada.”
The inquiry found that “while all Canadians are victims of foreign interference, the impacts of the latter are more present within some diaspora communities.” Representatives of Chinese, Russian, Iranian, Sikh, and Uyghur diaspora communities in Canada with firsthand experience with transnational repression testified at the public inquiry. In May, following the government’s announcement of Bill C-70, diaspora groups said the government’s proposed foreign influence registry is a long-overdue step toward addressing their communities’ concerns.
Corporate Accountability
The Trudeau government has taken steps to address impunity for abuses by Canadian companies overseas but has yet to pass mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence legislation. The Trudeau government recommitted in its 2024 budget to introduce legislation to eliminate forced labor from Canadian supply chains and tighten the import ban on products manufactured with forced labor.
The Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability urged the government to ensure that this legislation requires companies to exercise due diligence to prevent human rights abuses, empower affected communities to access remedies in Canadian courts, and apply to the full range of human rights. The passage of Bill S-211, which entered into force in January 2024, only obligates the government to set up a mandatory reporting system for Canadian companies and government bodies to report publicly on forced labor in their supply chains.
In response to a parliamentary report on the impact of mining on the environment and human rights, the government announced in February that it would assess the “effectiveness and progress to date” of the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (CORE). In March, the CORE released its first final report since the office began receiving complaints in 2021 against Canadian extractive and apparel companies.
During a visit to Canada in July, the UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders urged the Trudeau government to strengthen regulation and oversight of Canadian extractive companies operating abroad. She also critiqued the federal government for failing to ensure that the CORE had strong investigative powers.
In his report to the UN Human Rights Council in July, the UN special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery concluded that Canada’s temporary foreign worker program is rife with abuses and is a breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery.
Refugees, Asylum Seekers, and Migrants
People in immigration detention, including people with disabilities and those seeking refugee protection, continue to be regularly handcuffed and shackled in Canada. With no time limits on immigration detention, they can be detained for months or years, including in solitary confinement.
The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) remains the only major law enforcement agency in Canada without independent civilian oversight. The federal government has introduced oversight legislation, but it has yet to pass. CBSA’s unchecked exercise of its broad mandate and enforcement powers has repeatedly resulted in serious human rights violations in the context of immigration detention, including prolonged solitary confinement in maximum-security jails, child detention and family separation, indefinite detention, and the stripping of legal capacity of people with mental health conditions.
CBSA has traditionally had broad latitude to place people in immigrant holding centers, provincial jails, or other detention facilities. In a major victory for migrant and refugee rights in March, all 10 of Canada's provinces committed to ending their immigration detention agreements and arrangements with the federal government. This means CBSA will no longer have the power to detain refugee claimants and migrants in provincial jails solely on immigration grounds. In response, the federal government passed legislation to expand immigration detention into federal prisons.
The Canadian government also struggled in 2024 to implement new resettlement programs aimed at providing safe haven for people fleeing conflict who have family ties to Canada. Lengthy processing times, financial barriers, and physical hurdles to completing mandatory biometric screening in neighboring countries often resulted in significant delays. A family reunification program launched in February to allow Canadian citizens and permanent residents to sponsor relatives from Sudan had failed to admit a single person as of October.
As of September, only about 200 Palestinians had arrived in Canada through a special visa program launched in January; most had to pay exorbitant fees to cross into Egypt before making it to Canada. In May, the government announced that it would increase the heavily criticized temporary visa cap for Palestinians from 1,000 to 5,000. The resettlement cap and visa form unique to Palestinians was critiqued by civil society organizations as discriminatory, the latter for including questions about the applicant’s injuries and scars, social media accounts, employment history since the age of 16, and information on all in-law family members.
Counterterrorism
Canada again failed in 2024 to take adequate steps to assist and repatriate Canadian men, women, and children unlawfully detained in northeast Syria in locked desert camps and prisons for Islamic State (ISIS) suspects and their families. At this writing, at least 20 Canadians remained there, none of whom had been charged with a crime or brought before a judge to review the legality and necessity of their detention, making their detention both arbitrary and unlawful.
In May, Global Affairs Canada announced that six Canadian children were repatriated from camps in northeast Syria. According to the family’s lawyer, however, their mother was left behind after failing to pass a security screening.
To date, Canada has not repatriated any of the detained Canadian men in Syria, some of whom have been held for over seven years, in dire and life-threatening conditions. In March, four Canadian men urged the Supreme Court to reconsider its 2023 decision not to hear their case challenging a federal court of appeals ruling that absolved the government of any obligation to repatriate them.