The Future of Human Rights: International Conference on Race and Access to Justice in Canada

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Event Description

The Future of Human Rights Conference is a major international conference and the flagship academic event of the provincial Access to Justice Week at the University of British Columbia. The conference brings together leading scholars, human rights commissioners, practitioners, civil society actors, and a senior member of the judiciary to examine systemic, procedural, and institutional barriers to accessing justice within human rights systems in Canada and internationally, with particular attention to race, colonial legacies, and structural inequality.

The conference responds to persistent and well‑documented critiques of contemporary human rights regimes, including adjudicator bias, colour‑blind adjudication, procedural gatekeeping, delays, and the limited capacity of individual complaints‑based models to address systemic and collective harms experienced by racialized communities. While human rights institutions are often framed as sites of redress, this conference interrogates how institutional design, evidentiary practices, and jurisprudential approaches can themselves reproduce inequality.

The program is structured around themed academic panels, practitioner‑integrated sessions, and high‑level plenary events. Key confirmed elements include:

1. A high‑level panel of Human Rights Commissioners, including the Chief Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission and British Columbia’s Independent Human Rights Commissioner, focused on institutional reform and access to justice;
2. A Plenary Lecture by the Honourable Chief Justice Leonard Marchand, Chief Justice of British Columbia;
3. A featured conversation with a legal expert following the Plenary Lecture, examining judging, human rights, and access to justice for Indigenous Peoples in Canada;
4. Multiple scholarly, practitioner, and expert panels addressing race, access to justice, institutional bias, migration, disability, environmental justice, health justice, and systemic discrimination within human rights systems.

The conference brings together internationally recognized scholars and practitioners, including former and current UN Independent Experts and Special Rapporteurs, judiciary, faculty from leading Canadian and international law schools, representatives from organizations such as the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the BC Civil Liberties Association, as well as senior government officials.

Structured over two full days, the conference is designed to facilitate sustained, in-depth engagement among participants, including scholars, practitioners, and students. Panels are thematically organized to move from doctrinal and institutional analyses toward critical, interdisciplinary, and theoretical interventions, reflecting the conference’s focus on race, access to justice, and the limits and possibilities of contemporary human rights systems. 

Speakers will also examine foundational questions related to access to justice, as well as discrimination in health and healthcare systems, convening scholars whose work interrogates the intersections of human rights law, public health, and systemic inequality. Together, these panels will foreground the role of law in mediating access to essential social goods. 

Also included in the program is a practitioner-focused panel featuring representatives from leading civil liberties organizations, human rights tribunals, and legal practice. This session is designed to bridge theory and practice by examining how institutional design, procedural rules, and enforcement mechanisms operate in practice and where they fail to deliver meaningful access to justice for marginalized communities. 

Other panels will center on race, intersectionality, and critical perspectives on equality and human rights adjudication, including how race-neutral or colour-blind legal frameworks obscure lived experiences of inequality, and will interrogate the limits of existing human rights models in addressing systemic and intersectional harms. Subsequent panels will continue this critical engagement, bringing together scholars from law, political science, history, and related disciplines to explore institutional reform, jurisprudential trends, and comparative perspectives.

Midday programming on the second and final day of the conference will feature the Ontario Human Rights Commissioner’s keynote and Commissioners’ panel—a high-level session that brings senior institutional actors into direct dialogue with conference themes. The afternoon will conclude with a theory-focused panel examining human rights discourse, critique, and alternative conceptual frameworks for understanding rights, justice, and collective struggle. This final session is designed to synthesize the conference’s central themes and to encourage forward-looking conversations about the future of human rights scholarship and practice.

With a final evening program that includes a Plenary Lecture by the Chief Justice of British Columbia, the Honourable Leonard Marchand, on increasing access to justice for Indigenous People in Canada, this conference provides an unparalleled opportunity to address issues of race and access to justice within Canada’s human rights system and the possibilities for lasting reform.

Speakers

The Honourable Leonard S. Marchand was appointed Chief Justice of British Columbia in 2023. Previously, he served as a judge on the British Columbia Provincial, Supreme, and Appeal courts. As a lawyer, Chief Justice Marchand worked, among other things, on Indian Residential School survivor claims. He is Syilx and a member of the Okanagan Indian Band. He graduated law school from the University of Victoria in 1994.

Increasing Access to Justice for Indigenous People in Canada – A Realistically Optimistic Outlook
After locating himself as a person of mixed ancestry, Chief Justice Marchand will identify some of the access to justice barriers faced by Indigenous people in Canada historically and today. Chief Justice Marchand will then share his “realistically optimistic” outlook for the future. 

Patricia DeGuire is a Black woman who pushes boundaries to ensure access to justice, equality and equity. Before being appointed Chief Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission in August 2021, Patricia served as a Deputy Judge at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, on various provincial and federal tribunals and boards, and is known as an impactful mediator. She has played a leading role in many equity organizations, particularly related to access to justice, racism, in particular anti-Black racism, gender equality and equity, and the wellbeing of children and youths. She is a constitutional law scholar, and an avid mentor and coach for young people and adults in the legal, medical, and other professions. Patricia is the recipient of many awards for her mentorship and public service. She was awarded the designation of Kings Counsel in 2023 and LL.D. (honoris causa) by the Law Society of Ontario in June 2025.

B.C.’s Human Rights Commissioner, Kasari Govender, started her five-year term on Sept. 3, 2019. As an independent officer of the Legislature, Commissioner Govender is uniquely positioned to ensure human rights in B.C. are protected, respected and advanced on a systemic level. Her work through BC’s Office of the Human Rights Commissioner centres listening deeply to British Columbians to inform educational materials, policy guidance, public inquiries, interventions, community-based research and more that protects marginalized communities, addresses discrimination and injustice and upholds human rights for all.

Mr. Víctor Manuel Rodríguez Rescia was appointed a Member of the UN International Independent Expert Mechanism to Advance Racial Justice and Equality in the context of Law Enforcement in 2024. A former Deputy Secretary of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and former Director of the Human Rights Centre for the Americas, Mr. Rodriguez Rescia serves as President of the Centre for Civil and Political Rights in Geneva, Switzerland, and of the International Institute for Social Responsibility and Human Rights in San José, Costa Rica. He is a member of the General Assembly for the Inter-American Institute for Human Rights and of the Assembly of the International Commission of Jurists, as well as a visiting professor at various universities, including Columbia University and the University of Verona. He is also a former member of the UN Human Rights Committee, a body in which he was the Special Rapporteur for follow-up on communications and served as President of the UN Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture.