JUNKIES HAVE RIGHTS TOO

B.C. addicts press for anti-discrimination protection even as the
chief justice frets about equality

Ask most any western Canadian politician and he will say that one of
his constituents' most common complaints about modern jurisprudence is
that " equality rights" are being extended to absurd ends. It is one
thing to prohibit landlords from discriminating against
Indo-Canadians, for example, but it is another matter entirely to
prevent pub owners from keeping preoperative male-to-female
transsexuals out of women's washrooms, as has been ruled in B.C. How
far equality rights will eventually extend is a matter that perplexes
even Canada's top jurist, Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin. But if a
new B.C. case is any indication, the end may not be in sight.

So muddy are questions surrounding equality rights that Madam Justice
McLachlin asked the legal profession in early April to help the
country's top court sort through the problem.

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms, she said in a Toronto speech,
cannot be all things to all people.

She posed a series of questions to illustrate the difficulties the
court faces . "Must the claimant be a member of a disadvantaged
group?" she asked. " Can the government, for example, cut all men off
a welfare scheme on the grounds they are not disadvantaged? Where,
within groups, can the Legislature permissibly draw cut-off lines?

What about the argument that it is up to the Legislature to decide how
to allocate resources?"

The judge was speaking hypothetically, of course, but some observers
feel that, if the court were to follow the logic set out in previous
rulings, it might be forced to allow the sort of anti-male welfare
program she suggested. Less hypothetical is the question of whether
the charter should be employed to protect the poor; in other words,
whether one's economic status should be an equality right, as is one's
gender, faith, race, ethnicity or, as famously "read in" by the court,
sexual orientation. In fact, this fall the court will hear a case of a
Quebec woman fighting a provincial law that denies welfare to young
adults who refuse to take job-training or skills-upgrading programs.

If B.C.'s notoriously progressive Human Rights Commission (HRC) guides
the court, the judges might find in favour of the woman.

Last fall, an HRC tribunal ruled that a Nanaimo landlord had
discriminated against a tenant " on the basis of source of income,"
which was welfare.

As was the tribunal's earlier transsexual decision, the "source of
income" ruling was a de facto amendment to the province's human rights
legislation and, as such, an extension of equality rights not
explicitly authorized by politicians. In what appears to be an even
more unusual case, the B.C. commission has now received a complaint by
Vancouver drug addicts who charge that a popular city-run gathering
place, the Carnegie Centre, is discriminating against them on the
grounds they are intravenous drug users.

One woman said she was turned away by the centre, which is in the
heart of the city's skid road, "just because I talked to the other
dealers and addicts congregated around the front of the buildings."
The centre answers that it does not ban addicts per se, but only those
who misbehave.

The centre has even circulated "barring guidelines" to its staff,
according to the Georgia Straight magazine.

The document lists 14 offences, from verbal abuse to child
molestation, which carry exclusions ranging from one week to
permanent. The HRC ruled in earlier cases that alcoholics and
cigarette smokers cannot be discriminated against because alcoholism
and tobacco addiction are disabilities. If drug addicts can persuade
the commission to apply the same reasoning to them, they might win
their case. However, lawyer Iain Benson, of the Ottawa-based Centre
for Renewal in Public Policy, points out that operators of public open
spaces have a long-established right to restrict entry. "It's the old
no-shirt, no-shoes, no-service" rule, he says. "The question is one of
line-drawing."

That may be, but Kari Simpson, head of B.C.'s Citizens Research
Institute, says no one should expect rational thinking from the HRC.
"I think they are State fanatics," says Mrs. Simpson, who is currently
fighting a complaint at the commission. "It's a regressive,
overbearing, undemocratic system which dictates conformity to the
convenience of the State...It's a farce, and a circus and an expensive
one at that." The commission does not comment on complaints it has
received or on cases its tribunal is hearing.