Our Work
Our Work Centres Around Our Five Core Beliefs
Equality – which includes equity, diversity, and inclusion – recognizes that every person is equal in value and worth, and each is deserving of fairness, dignity and rights.
FUNDAMENTAL FREEDOMS
Fundamental Freedoms allow individuals and groups to express themselves, to believe and practice what they choose, and to exercise their right to vote.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
We work to ensure that constitutional rights are respected at every step of the criminal justice system, and that the extraordinary powers conferred to police and criminal courts are used proportionately, fairly, humanely, and only when absolutely necessary.
PRIVACY
We bring a principled and rights-focused approach to assessing the impact of new technologies and surveillance, in areas ranging from policing methods to people’s public and private lives.
EDUCATION
CCLA & CCLET provide free workshops, seminars, and in-class sessions in schools, educational institutions, and faculties of education, educating citizens about their rights and freedoms.
Our Recent Cases and Reports
View our latest work and activity.
Strip Searches in Ontario Prisons
Ontario's law gives provincial prisons carte blanche to strip search any prisoner, at any time, for no reason. We believe the law is unconstitutional.
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Emergencies Act
While action in Ottawa was necessary, the federal government’s national invocation of the Emergencies Act was not. Emergency powers are, by definition, extraordinary. Resort to emergency statutes should not be normalized.
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Vaccine Passports
The lines are being drawn between those who support and oppose some version of a vaccine passport. At CCLA, we have flashed red and yellow lights at any effort by a Canadian government to mandate public disclosure of private health care information.
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Bill 21
Bill 21 is a law which disproportionately impacts people who are already marginalized. New Quebec laws ban Canadians working as teachers, lawyers, police officers, and more from wearing religious symbols such as crosses, hijabs, turbans and yarmulkes. This not only affects people currently working in the public sector, but also the youth who aspire to those careers.
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Fill Up On Free Speech
The Ontario legislature passed a law that forces gas station owners to put up stickers with the government party line on pollution pricing or the carbon tax. The government should not force anyone to share their message. If the station owners choose to not put up the stickers, they can be handed a new fine every day. That’s called “compelled political speech.” That’s unconstitutional.
Defending Mobility in NL
Bill 38 gives “inspectors” – as defined by the Minister – the ability to conduct warrantless searches and gives the police the right to remove individuals to a point of entry, such as an airport or ferry terminal. The province has also used a Special Measure to ban non-residents from entering the province, with limited exceptions. This amounts to a Newfoundland “travel ban”, as well as essentially legalizing banishment. We think this is unconstitutional.
Privacy During COVID
Providing personal health information directly to law enforcement is an extraordinary invasion of privacy. There is a real risk that using this database will create a false sense of security when first responders are interacting with individuals who have not been flagged, thus serving to create rather than mitigate danger. If having this information is not strictly necessary to respond to the pandemic, then sharing it is not legal.
Racial Profiling
Canadian police detain thousands of racialized persons in suspicionless roadside stops each year. These police powers enable racial profiling and we believe they are unconstitutional.
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Fighting for Safe Shelter
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we are deeply concerned that the City continues to operate and oversee shelters that do not adhere to physical distancing standards. The overcrowded conditions in Toronto’s homeless facilities have created a humanitarian crisis that threatens the people who use these spaces, along with the shelters’ staff and volunteers, and the city’s broader neighbourhoods and communities. The City is endangering those who use the shelter system.
Families & COVID
Children’s Aid Societies are responsible for the delivery of child protection services, in accordance with legislation, regulations, and ministry policy and standards. At CCLA, we believe while the existence of a public health emergency requires caution, denying parents and children the opportunity to be together or risking a loss of the valuable child-parent bond is a violation of human rights and freedoms.
Protecting Reproductive Rights
A New Brunswick regulation restricts access to abortion unless done in approved hospitals, even though this restriction is not medically necessary or justified. The New Brunswick law has createD a serious issue for New Brunswick women, girls and trans people who need access to abortion, a basic form of health care.
Fighting Strip Searches
In 2001, the Supreme Court of Canada called strip searches “one of the most extreme exercises of police power” and “inherently humiliating and degrading”. So why has Canada’s federal prison system carried out hundreds of thousands of unnecessary strip searches since then? These are not trivial intrusions. Canadians serving sentences are forced to undergo highly invasive searches in low-risk situations, such as leaving a secure area, or even upon release from prison. These searches can inflict severe psychological trauma, particularly for those with a history of being abused. We’re asking the federal government to end these harmful practices.
Toronto's Smart City
Waterfront Toronto contracted with Google’s sibling Sidewalk Labs to create a smart city project in downtown Toronto. This project would be a sensor-laden neighbourhood, collecting data on people who live, work, or visit the area. Losing the ability to be a face in the crowd, and so much of our privacy, is what’s at stake. So we launched a legal action to reset the project.
COVID & Enforcement Report
CCLA and PPMP Release New Report Examining Covid-19 Policing in the Second Wave, which examines the use of coercive fines and law enforcement to respond to a public health crisis.
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Protecting Civil Liberties in Thunder Bay
CCLA and our partners fought to have Thunder Bay’s Medical Officer of Health rescind her February 8th Class Order targeting individuals released from Thunder Bay District Jail. Detention outside of the rule of law is a clear and deeply concerning violation of constitutional rights. An emergency is a perilous time for civil liberties. Emergency powers are extensive – but they are limited – limited by law and by the Canadian constitution.
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Detasking Toronto Police Report
CCLA Partners on Report, entitled Rethinking Community Safety – A Step Forward For Toronto, urging City of Toronto to shift resources and responsibilities away from the police and towards alternative crisis response and social support mechanisms.
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Protest Rights & the G20
Canadians deserve to know why the security failed to fulfill its role to protect the right to protest, which brings together a number of basic civil liberties including freedom of expression, freedom of association and freedom of peaceful assembly.
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