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Human Rights (Fed) - Standing. Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians v. Canada (Attorney General)
In Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians v. Canada (Attorney General) (Fed CA, 2023) the Federal Court of Appeal denied human rights complainant standing to a non-profit blind person's rights corporation, not since it was a corporation per se but because it was "made on behalf of Alliance, not an individual":[3] Here, the Commission expressly recognized the seriousness of the human rights issues raised by the complaint and the strong public interest in ensuring that services and programs provided by the Government are accessible, particularly where their target is support of persons with disabilities. However, the Commission characterized the complaint as one made by Alliance, not by an individual. Because the Canadian Human Rights Act protects individuals, not corporations, the Commission determined the complaint was beyond its jurisdiction.
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[9] The Commission’s decision in this case is not premised on a conclusion that any discrimination complaint made by an organization is beyond its jurisdiction. Rather, the report of the human rights officer, with which the Commission agreed, expressly acknowledged that an organization may make a complaint of discrimination on behalf of an individual when the alleged discrimination is against the individual. However, the Commission characterized the complaint in this case as one made on behalf of Alliance, not an individual. As already stated, we agree with the Federal Court that that characterization of the complaint was reasonable.
[10] In oral argument, Alliance repeatedly emphasized that the Commission ignored portions of the complaint. We disagree. The Commission considered the whole of the complaint including portions that might have supported Alliance’s characterization of the complaint but characterized the complaint as being that of Alliance, an entity that is not an “individual” under the Act. As the Federal Court found, this was a factually suffused characterization that cannot be said to be unreasonable.
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