When the Police Say Human Rights Don't Apply to Them
by Sara Wilson

Imagine sitting in a cold, sterile room. You are there because you were hurt, and you are seeking the help of the people sworn to protect you. You have waited years to say what happened. You say it. And then the officer asks you to take a polygraph test. Then asks again. And again. Twelve times in a single interview.

This is not a hypothetical. This is what members of Lake Babine Nation reported to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal about how the RCMP handled their complaints of abuse at Catholic-run schools in Burns Lake and Prince George in the 1960s and 1970s. Last month, after a complaint filed in 2017 and a 44-day hearing, the Tribunal found that race and national origin were factors in how the RCMP treated them procedurally, not in the quality of the investigation itself, but in the basic human decency extended to the people who came forward.

The Tribunal's remedy was narrow. It did not condemn the investigation. It did not order a new one. It asked the RCMP to ensure that Indigenous complainants are told the outcome of their own cases, advised that they can report abuse separately, and not repeatedly asked to take a polygraph. Tribunal member Colleen Harrington wrote that these basic accommodations "would not have interfered with the RCMP's duty to conduct its investigations in the public interest."

Three of the six complainants, Cathy Woodgate, Ann Tom, and Emma Williams, did not live to see that ruling. They filed the complaint in 2017. Compensation was paid to their estates.

Then the RCMP appealed.

The argument is worth reading carefully, because it is not about the facts. The force is not disputing what the Tribunal found. It is arguing the Tribunal never had the right to hear the case at all, because policing, it says, is not a service. And under section 5 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, services are what the law protects people against discrimination in.

They want to call it a sovereign act. A public good. Something that belongs to everyone in the abstract and therefore to no one in particular. So, they can walk away without answering even for the minimal procedural accountability the Tribunal identified.

This is not a semantic disagreement. It is the moment the door of the law slams shut in the face of a victim.

The Supreme Court of Canada has consistently held that human rights legislation must be interpreted broadly and purposively, in favour of the people it is designed to protect. The RCMP's appeal asks the Federal Court to do the opposite: to read the Act narrowly, in a way that removes accountability for one of the most powerful institutions in the country at precisely the moments when accountability matters most.

There is a further detail worth noting. The RCMP argues the proper forum for discrimination complaints is the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission, the police watchdog. That body has been without a permanent chairperson since January 2025. Its backlog is severe and growing. The RCMP is simultaneously arguing it shouldn't face the Tribunal while pointing to an alternative that is currently unable to function. The door it is pointing to is locked.

As Chair of the Vancouver Island Human Rights Coalition, we work with people trying to navigate the human rights system every day. The path is already brutally difficult. Filing a complaint requires legal literacy, emotional endurance, and the willingness to relive harm in formal proceedings, often against respondents with institutional resources and lawyers. Most people who experience discrimination never make it to a hearing. The ones who do have cleared a bar that would stop most of us cold.

The Lake Babine Nation members who brought this complaint filed it in 2017. The hearing ended in 2024. Three of them died waiting. The ruling came last month. Now they face an appeal designed to erase not just the outcome but the premise,  that what was done to them is something the human rights system has any business addressing at all.

If the Federal Court accepts this argument, the consequences reach far beyond this case. Every person who approaches police as a victim and experiences discrimination in how their complaint is handled would have no recourse under federal human rights law. The people most likely to experience that treatment are Indigenous people, racialized communities, and people with disabilities. The people who most need the protection.

Human rights law exists because power does not police itself. The Tribunal's ruling did not demand perfection from the RCMP. It asked for the minimum, that victims be told what happened to their own cases, that they be treated with basic procedural fairness. That is not a radical demand. It is the floor.

The RCMP's appeal argues even that floor is too high.

The rest of us should disagree, loudly, and on the record.

After years of advocacy during the UN Decade for People of African Descent, why are we still being erased by the same form that recognizes the diversity of other communities?

Black people living in Canada deserve to be counted — accurately and completely.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Opinion: Census categorization flattens Black diversity — urgent call for nuanced racial data

Victoria, B.C. Canada. Wednesday, May 13, 2026: Yesterday, while completing my census and reaching the question, “Which population group or groups best describe this person?”, I was struck by a painful inconsistency: people can tick boxes for specific national identities like Japan or Korea, yet I — and millions of Black people living in Canada of African, South American and Caribbean descent — am confined to a single, homogenized “Black” checkbox that erases our diverse histories, cultures, and nations. 

As a Black woman and community advocate, I am deeply concerned by how the national census continues to collapse thousands of distinct Black identities into a single, broad category. After years of community work, research, and advocacy to combat anti-Black racism, our lived realities remain invisible when the state treats “Black” as a monolith — while other racialized groups are offered granular options that reflect complex national, ethnic, and cultural differences.

The Black diaspora is not a single culture. It includes, among many others, people who identify as:

• Nigerian, Ghanaian, Cameroonian, Togolese (West African identities)

• Ethiopian, Eritrean, Somali (Horn of Africa identities)

• Kenyan, Ugandan, Tanzanian (East African identities)

• Congolese, Rwandan, Burundian (Central/East-Central African identities)

• South African, Zimbabwean, Zambian, Mozambican (Southern African identities)

• Haitian, Jamaican, Trinidadian and Tobagonian, Barbadian, Guyanese (Caribbean identities)

• Afro-Latinx (e.g., Colombian, Brazilian, Dominican, Cuban) with distinct Iberian and Indigenous influences

• Afro-European (Black British, Black French, Afro-German and other Black Europeans)

• Black Indigenous and mixed-heritage communities whose histories predate colonially defined borders

Each of these communities carries its own languages, histories, migration stories, faith traditions, cultural practices, and socio-political contexts. Lumping us together erases differences in indicators that matter: educational attainment, immigration status, labour force participation, health disparities, rates of policing and incarceration, language access needs, and culturally specific supports. Aggregated data can hide who needs which services and where investments should be targeted.

Contrast this with how many census forms allow people of Asian descent to identify more specifically — for example, Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Vietnamese, Korean, etc. Those distinctions help governments and service providers tailor programs, fund language services, and track inequities specific to communities. Why are similar distinctions not routinely available for Black communities, when the same logic applies? The absence of granularity for Black populations is not neutral: it reproduces colonial-era simplifications and denies policymakers the information required to address targeted anti-Black discrimination.

In 2015 the United Nations proclaimed 2015–2024 the International Decade for People of African Descent, and many governments and civil society organizations used this period to spotlight systemic anti‑Black racism and to develop targeted policies and programs. With extensions and continued focus beyond that decade, there is renewed momentum to translate commitments into measurable changes. This makes it all the more urgent that census data capture the full diversity within Black communities so progress during and after the Decade can be properly measured, held to account, and built upon.

As someone filling in my census, I feel the tension between the importance of being counted and the frustration of being flattened into a category that fails to represent my lived complexity. When the state asks “Are you Black?” without asking “Which Black community do you belong to?” it signals a lack of commitment to understanding and remedying the specific harms experienced by different Black communities.

Our ask is simple and urgent:

• Expand census categories and response options to capture the diverse national, ethnic, and cultural identities within Black populations.

• Allow multiple, disaggregated identifiers (national origin, ethnicity, language, and Afro-descendant subcategories) so data can meaningfully inform policy and funding.

• Consult with Black-led community organizations when designing the questions to ensure categories are respectful, relevant, and useful.

• Commit to releasing disaggregated data publicly so researchers, advocates, funders, and communities can track outcomes and hold institutions accountable.

Until the census recognizes our diversity, decisions about resources, services, and policy will continue to be made with incomplete — and therefore unjust — information. I filled in my census yesterday because counting matters; now we call on government to count us accurately.

Contact:
Dominique Jacobs
Executive Director, Vancouver Island Human Rights Coalition
contactvihrc@gmail.com