Human Rights in Canada: A History by Dominique Clément (review)

These are interesting times for those studying the history of human rights. Heated historiographical debates have reoriented the field from its highly legalistic focus to one more attuned to the influence of local, national, and international social movements. Moreover, arguments have swirled with fierce energy on the subject of the origins, substance, and impact of the contemporary human rights moment.

Dominique Clément’s Human Rights in Canada: A History provides a timely overview of what he describes as the “societal preconditions” that have shaped Canada’s “rights culture” (7). Rather than delve into the thick of the historiographical melee, however, Clément offers an overview of key moments, movements, and legislation that have shaped discussions and human rights legislation in Canada since the nineteenth century. The list includes not only progressive moments but also periods of oppression where activists lobbied for reform. Clément identifies the rebellions of the 1830s, the First and Second World Wars, labour protests, the women’s movement, and Aboriginal activism as key elements in the development and transformation of a unique rights culture in Canada. It is an impressive accounting and includes many examples that have been previously overlooked, such as the sex discrimination case brought by Trudy Ann Holloway in 1981.

Clément treats human rights as a “particular type of social practice” and “not an abstract principle” (7). This is an important intervention as any study of human rights must necessarily entail close attention to the rhetoric and substance of rights discussions as well as the debates and contestations that brought certain issues to prominence at specific moments in time. To date, the literature on human rights in Canada has been characterized by collected editions with individual chapters focusing on specific issues (A History of Human Rights in Canada: Essential Issues, edited by Janet Miron, Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2009, or Taking Liberties: A History of Human Rights in Canada, edited by David Goutor and Stephen Heathorn, Oxford University Press, 2013) or work that focuses either on the liberal origins of human rights (Michael Ignatieff’s Massey Lectures on the “The Rights Revolution,” House of Anansi Press, 2007) or social movement influence (Ross Lambertson, Repression and Resistance: Canada’s Human Rights Activists, 1930–1960, University of Toronto Press, 2005). Clément’s efforts to consolidate our understanding of rights in Canada are therefore much needed, yet they are also rather ambitious for a slim volume aimed at both a general and scholarly audience.

In order to cover all of the chronological terrain he desires, Clément is forced to forego detailed explorations of some of the messier historiographical issues. One of the principal challenges that human rights scholars have struggled with to date is how to research histories of human rights without reading the present’s dominant rhetorical and conceptual paradigms back on to the past. Historian Samuel Moyn, in Human Rights and the Uses of History, for instance, cautions against “ransacking the past as if it provided good support” for the current human rights moment (Verso, 2014, xiii). Clément is attuned to such admonishments and notes throughout his work that notions of what constitute rights are historically contingent and that the history of rights is hardly one of linear progress. Unfortunately, Clément’s careful argumentation is sometimes lost in his efforts to provide a clear narrative thread for his readers. Referring to a “rights culture” in nineteenth-century Canada is complicated, for instance, as it implies that British notions of civil liberties were tantamount to the presumed rights culture that exists today. An even greater complication arises from the fact that Clément chooses not to delve into the nuances at the core of terms such as “rights culture” and “rights revolution,” both of which belong to particular corners in the historiographical debate. What is a rights culture beyond a way of thinking about rights? What is meant by the so-called rights revolution? How does one measure...