May 17 - 18, 2022
Documents are mirrored as local PDFs from the OHCHR treaty-body session page for Canada's 2022 review.
Treat youth homelessness as a distinct rights issue requiring dedicated federal, provincial and territorial prevention strategies.
Shift policy from emergency shelter responses toward prevention, early intervention, family and natural-supports work, and sustained exits from homelessness.
Require youth-serving systems such as child welfare, youth justice, health and immigration to use discharge planning that prevents young people from cycling into homelessness.
Guarantee confidential, youth-friendly sexual and reproductive health services for children and adolescents, including during public health emergencies.
Pair comprehensive sexuality education with clear pathways to community-based sexual health services.
Use a non-discrimination approach so adolescents, including marginalized youth, can access testing, contraception, abortion-related information and sexual health care.
Guarantee confidential, youth-friendly sexual and reproductive health services for children and adolescents, including during public health emergencies.
Pair comprehensive sexuality education with clear pathways to community-based sexual health services.
Use a non-discrimination approach so adolescents, including marginalized youth, can access testing, contraception, abortion-related information and sexual health care.
Review immigration, education and guardianship rules that allow children to be separated from parents while attending religious or private schools in Canada.
Require stronger child-rights safeguards, informed consent and independent oversight where minors study in Canada without their parents.
Assess custodianship arrangements for international students against the best interests of the child and the right to family life.
Redirect child welfare policy and funding toward community-based supports for marginalized families.
Create consequences and accountability for child welfare practices that harm Indigenous and other marginalized children.
Use recognition, redistribution and community investment to reduce reliance on apprehension and institutional responses.
Repeal section 43 of the Criminal Code so children have equal protection from physical punishment.
Adopt national, rights-based public education on positive, non-violent discipline.
Implement the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Call to Action 6 on ending legal justification for corporal punishment.
Repeal section 43 of the Criminal Code without further delay.
Pair repeal with implementation and enforcement measures prohibiting physical punishment in every setting.
Support parents, caregivers, educators and faith communities with training on positive discipline and children?s rights.
Implement a child-rights approach to preventing youth homelessness, consistent with General Comment 21 on children in street situations.
Create a continuum of prevention, housing and support services tailored to young people, including those leaving public systems.
Fund youth homelessness research, demonstration projects and community implementation of prevention models.
Make comprehensive sexuality education mandatory, evidence-based, age-appropriate and inclusive across Canada.
Develop sexuality education with adolescents and include gender equality, sexual diversity, consent, sexual health and reproductive rights.
Ensure comprehensive sexuality education reaches out-of-school adolescents and youth facing discrimination.
Fully implement Canadian Human Rights Tribunal orders on First Nations child and family services and Jordan?s Principle.
Provide equitable, needs-based funding with independent oversight so discriminatory underfunding does not recur.
Address violence against Indigenous girls and youth through implementation of the MMIWG Calls for Justice and child welfare reform.
Adopt a coordinated national strategy to eliminate child poverty with annual targets and rights-based accountability.
Treat poverty as a children?s rights violation and align poverty reduction measures with the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Strengthen income supports, housing, food security and services for children and families in low income.
Incorporate the Convention on the Rights of the Child into domestic law and review federal, provincial and territorial laws for compliance.
Ratify the Third Optional Protocol and ensure children can access remedies for rights violations.
Establish a national Commissioner for Children and Youth and require child-rights impact assessments for laws, policies and budgets.
Amend citizenship and administrative rules to prevent any child in Canada from being left stateless.
Facilitate birth registration, citizenship applications and proof of nationality where children would otherwise lack legal status.
Ratify the 1954 Statelessness Convention and protect the identity, culture and language rights of Indigenous and minority children.
Create a comprehensive national strategy for implementing the Convention across all jurisdictions.
Strengthen federal coordination, monitoring and public reporting on children?s rights implementation.
Use child-rights impact assessments, disaggregated data and independent oversight to close systemic implementation gaps.
Collect national data on children with incarcerated parents and use it to guide policy.
Make the best interests of the child a primary consideration at every stage of criminal justice decision-making affecting parents.
Reduce harms from parental incarceration through alternatives to custody, family contact, culturally appropriate supports and reintegration services.
Create a federal Commissioner for Children and Youth with an independent mandate.
Protect children?s rights during and after COVID-19 through youth participation, mental health supports and rights-based recovery planning.
Support national platforms that enable children and youth to engage directly with Parliamentarians and decision-makers.
Create a federal Commissioner for Children and Youth.
Develop a National Strategy for Children and Youth with measurable goals and accountability.
Invest in children?s health, safety, education, participation and well-being as core rights obligations.
Create a comprehensive national data system disaggregated by race, age, gender identity, disability, immigration status, geography and socio-economic status.
Use disaggregated data to identify and remedy systemic racism affecting children.
Apply an intersectional child-rights approach to laws, programs, budgets and service delivery.
Repeal section 43 of the Criminal Code.
Prohibit all corporal punishment of children in homes, schools, care settings and all other environments.
Implement TRC Call to Action 6 and provide public education on positive, non-violent discipline.
End immigration detention of children and avoid ?housing? children in detention with detained parents.
Make the best interests of the child a primary consideration in all immigration detention decisions affecting children.
Use community-based alternatives to detention and ensure independent monitoring of CBSA practices.
Recognize and implement the child?s right to play in policy, planning, education and recreation systems.
Remove municipal bylaws and institutional rules that unnecessarily restrict children?s play and physical activity.
Train planners, educators, health professionals and recreation providers on play as a protected right.
Report on climate action and environmental protection as obligations under children?s rights to life, survival, development and non-discrimination.
Include children?s views and girls? experiences in climate and environmental decision-making.
Adopt stronger emissions reduction, pollution prevention and environmental justice measures to protect children.
Strengthen youth justice protections so detention is used only as a last resort and for the shortest appropriate time.
Expand diversion, restorative justice and community-based responses for children in conflict with the law.
Ensure youth justice laws and practices are consistent with the Convention and international juvenile justice standards.
Ensure policies and legislation respond to the rights and needs of urban Indigenous children and youth.
Fund Friendship Centres and urban Indigenous organizations to deliver culturally grounded services in early learning, education, health, language, culture and family support.
Collect and use data on urban Indigenous children while respecting Indigenous data governance.
Strengthen legal accountability for institutions that failed to protect children from clerical sexual abuse.
Ensure survivors of child sexual abuse can access remedies despite institutional restructuring, bankruptcy or limitation barriers.
Require transparent safeguarding, reporting and independent oversight in religious institutions serving children.
Implement the TRC Calls to Action and MMIWG Calls for Justice affecting Indigenous children and youth.
Ensure equitable, culturally appropriate child and family services and full implementation of Jordan?s Principle.
Address water, health, safety, violence and service inequities experienced by Indigenous girls and gender-diverse youth.
Create comprehensive disaggregated data on children with disabilities.
Ensure inclusive education and end forced reliance on segregated schooling.
Provide accessible health, mental health, respite and community supports for children with disabilities and their families.
Guarantee safe, accessible, reliable drinking water for First Nations children.
Create enforceable protections for water quality and infrastructure in First Nations communities.
Address the health, food security and cultural harms caused by long-term drinking water advisories.
Create a national strategy for implementing the Convention, supported by federal leadership and funding.
Establish a federal children?s ombudsperson with authority to monitor rights and receive complaints from children.
Improve child-rights data, public education, professional training and child participation in decision-making.
Prohibit non-consensual, medically unnecessary surgeries and treatments on intersex children.
Ensure access to redress, compensation and rehabilitation for survivors of intersex genital mutilation.
Provide independent counselling and ensure medical protocols respect bodily autonomy and informed consent.
Protect children?s privacy and equality in digital environments without relying on excessive surveillance.
Include youth voices in online safety, platform regulation and digital rights policy.
Address corporate data practices, cyberviolence and online exploitation through child-rights-based regulation.
Repeal section 43 of the Criminal Code.
Implement a national plan to end all forms of violence against children by 2030.
Replace physical punishment with positive discipline education and enforceable child protection standards.
Apply Arms Trade Treaty risk assessments to prevent exports that may facilitate serious violence against children or gender-based violence.
Deny arms transfers where there is a substantial risk of war crimes, human rights violations or harm to children.
Increase transparency, end-use monitoring and accountability in Canadian arms exports.
Incorporate the Convention into Canadian law and align family, child welfare and youth justice laws with children?s rights.
Ratify the Third Optional Protocol and improve access to remedies for children.
Require child-rights impact assessments and create independent national oversight for children?s rights.
Strengthen the federal interdepartmental mandate for implementing children?s rights.
Require child-rights impact assessments for laws, budgets and policies affecting children.
Repeal section 43 and act on repeated recommendations to prohibit corporal punishment.
Provide child-sensitive harm reduction, treatment and drug education grounded in accurate, objective information.
Stop criminalizing children and youth for drug use or possession for personal use.
Align drug policy with the Convention and the International Guidelines on Human Rights and Drug Policy.
Adopt a rights-based national food strategy that includes a federally funded children and food strategy.
Protect children from marketing of nutrient-poor foods and beverages.
Improve school food, food literacy and healthy activity measures without stigmatizing children.
Adopt a rights-based national food strategy and school food program for children.
Strengthen monitoring of federal, provincial and territorial compliance with child health and nutrition obligations.
Provide public-interest researchers and non-profits with better access to data needed to assess children?s rights.
Apply an intersectional children?s rights approach to child welfare, youth protection and public services.
Review criteria and procedures that exclude children and families because of race, language, gender, disability or other prohibited grounds.
Require anti-racism training, meaningful child participation and discrimination prevention across child-serving systems.
Create a federal Commissioner for Children and Youth.
Address COVID-19 impacts through child mental health supports, poverty reduction and safe education measures.
Use children?s participation and youth-led evidence to guide national recovery and rights implementation.
Raise the minimum age for voluntary military recruitment to 18.
Stop actively targeting Indigenous youth or other vulnerable youth for military recruitment.
Ensure any training for recruits under 18 excludes firearms and military activities inconsistent with child protection.
Collect data on children affected by parental incarceration in every correctional system.
Ask about parenting responsibilities at admission and use the information to protect children?s best interests.
Develop policies that preserve family contact and support children when a parent is detained or imprisoned.
Adopt concrete measures to end female genital mutilation or cutting in Canada.
Provide survivor-centred health, social and legal supports for girls and women affected by FGM/C.
Improve prevention, data collection, professional training and enforcement of protections against FGM/C.
Support global access to affordable insulin for children with Type 1 diabetes.
Use international cooperation to protect children?s rights to life, survival and health in poorer countries.
Address pricing, availability and supply barriers that prevent children from obtaining essential medicines.
End immigration detention of children and family separation caused by detention.
Replace detention with community-based alternatives that protect children?s rights and family unity.
Require independent oversight and meaningful best-interests assessments in immigration enforcement.
Create a national strategy to protect and support children?s rights across federal, provincial and territorial systems.
Protect independent child advocate offices and ensure every jurisdiction has effective child-rights oversight.
Restore and strengthen supports for children with complex needs, including children in care.
Address the specific rights of girls facing poverty, violence, colonization and environmental injustice.
Treat climate change as a children?s rights issue requiring urgent emissions reductions.
Ensure girls? participation and protection in climate, environmental and anti-violence policy.
Create national and provincial standards for services to signing deaf children.
Recognize and support national sign languages in education and early childhood services.
Monitor implementation of the Convention for deaf children and ensure decisions reflect the child?s best interests.
Strengthen accountability for child sexual abuse by clergy and religious institutions.
Ensure survivors can obtain compensation and remedies when institutions use bankruptcy or restructuring processes.
Mandate independent safeguarding, reporting and transparency requirements for institutions working with children.
Provide sustainable, long-term water infrastructure in every Indigenous community.
Legislate and fully fund Jordan?s Principle so Indigenous children receive needed services without jurisdictional delay.
Work with Indigenous women and communities to end discrimination in child and family services.
Treat child and family homelessness as a central National Housing Strategy accountability issue.
Set rights-based targets to eliminate homelessness and housing insecurity for families with children.
Coordinate federal, provincial and territorial action on affordable housing, eviction prevention and child poverty.
Address mental health inequities faced by children with neurodevelopmental disabilities during and after COVID-19.
Provide accessible respite, home care, education and community supports for children with disabilities and families.
Improve disability-disaggregated data and ensure services are designed with children and caregivers.
Address violence, drugs, bullying, racism and gang recruitment risks in schools.
Increase school accountability, supervision and parent participation in safety planning.
Provide culturally responsive prevention and support for South Asian and other racialized youth.
Create a comprehensive national disaggregated data system to identify racial and intersecting inequalities affecting children.
Use data to design targeted strategies, budgets and legal reforms addressing systemic racism.
Advance Bill S-217 or equivalent legislation to establish national child-rights oversight.
Create a comprehensive national disaggregated data system to identify racial and intersecting inequalities affecting children.
Use data to design targeted strategies, budgets and legal reforms addressing systemic racism.
Advance Bill S-217 or equivalent legislation to establish national child-rights oversight.
Prohibit harmful medical practices on intersex children.
Investigate human rights violations against intersex children and ensure accountability.
Provide access to justice, remedy, compensation and independent counselling for survivors.
Codify the best interests of the child in Criminal Code provisions affecting children and youth denied liberty.
Improve health care and conditions for youth in custody, consistent with the Mandela and Beijing Rules.
Address discrimination against Indigenous youth and girls in youth justice and detention settings.
Incorporate children?s rights more clearly into Canadian governance structures.
Recognize the diverse and intersecting experiences of children rather than treating children as a homogeneous group.
Increase child and youth participation in human rights education, policy and institutional decision-making.
Incorporate the Convention into New Brunswick legislation and make it enforceable in child-serving systems.
Protect independent child and youth advocacy functions and ensure children can raise rights concerns.
Use children?s voices and best-interests analysis in all decisions affecting them.
Establish a national Children?s Commissioner.
Create a national framework protecting independent child and youth advocate offices and their broad mandates.
Improve federal, provincial and territorial coordination for child-rights enforcement and accountability.
Incorporate the Convention into Canadian law and recognize the rule of law in children?s rights enforcement.
Comply fully with Canadian Human Rights Tribunal orders on First Nations child and family services.
Establish national child-rights accountability through independent oversight and coordinated implementation.
Incorporate the Convention into Canadian law and recognize the rule of law in children?s rights enforcement.
Comply fully with Canadian Human Rights Tribunal orders on First Nations child and family services.
Establish national child-rights accountability through independent oversight and coordinated implementation.
Reduce Indigenous over-incarceration and address systemic inequities in criminal justice systems.
Implement UNDRIP in justice, corrections and recidivism-reduction frameworks.
Use community-based, Indigenous-led and restorative approaches to support reintegration and family well-being.
Embed children?s rights in federal human rights governance and implementation structures.
Ensure children?s diverse experiences are heard directly in policy and institutional work.
Strengthen education, complaint pathways and public reporting on children?s rights.
Safe drinking water for First Nations children - paragraphs 38-39(a): The Committee recommended that Canada, in collaboration with Indigenous communities, develop water and sanitation plans that "allow for long-term and sustainable solutions" and include "quantifiable targets, sufficient and consistent budget allocations and a fixed time frame." This directly reflects concerns raised by Save the Children Canada and NWAC.
Child poverty reduction - paragraphs 38-39(b) and 39(e): The Committee recommended that Canada "ensure that all children and their families living in poverty receive adequate financial support and free, accessible services without discrimination" and "establish ambitious annual targets to eliminate child poverty." This aligns with Canada Without Poverty, Campaign 2000, Citizens for Public Justice and Colour of Poverty - Colour of Change.
Homelessness and adequate housing - paragraph 39(c): The Committee recommended that Canada "strengthen measures, including timelines and priorities to achieve its targets to end homelessness among children" and guarantee low-income children stable access to adequate and affordable long-term housing. This is closely linked to submissions from A Way Home Canada, Making the Shift, NRHN and WNHHN.
Eviction prevention - paragraph 39(d): The Committee recommended revising eviction laws to ensure "that the best interests of the child are given primary consideration in all eviction matters" and that all eviction-prevention avenues are pursued before tenancy is terminated. This connects to NGO concerns about housing insecurity pushing children and families into homelessness.
Family supports to prevent unnecessary separation - paragraph 30: The Committee recommended that Canada "strengthen its support provided to families in vulnerable situations, in particular families living in poverty, in order to prevent the separation of children from their families." This supports the concerns raised by child welfare, anti-poverty and Indigenous organizations about poverty-related family separation.
Child welfare and alternative care - paragraphs 31-32: The Committee recommended that Canada ensure "financial and material poverty, or conditions directly and uniquely attributable to such poverty, should never be the sole justification" for removing a child from parental care or placing a child in alternative care. This reflects concerns from Amnesty International, NWAC, the Canadian Bar Association and child welfare advocates.
Health care for every child - paragraph 34: The Committee recommended that Canada "ensure that all children who live in Canada have an equal entitlement and equal access to public health-care services, regardless of their immigration status" and address health disparities affecting marginalized children. This links to concerns from Action Canada, Human Rights Watch and disability rights submissions.
Mental health and suicide prevention - paragraph 35: The Committee recommended that Canada "strengthen mental health services and programmes for children" and "prioritize mental health service delivery to children in vulnerable situations," while adopting a child-focused section of the federal suicide prevention framework. This corresponds to concerns raised by Children First Canada and disability-focused submissions.
Adolescent health and sexuality education - paragraphs 36 and 40(c): The Committee recommended that Canada "strengthen sexual and reproductive health programmes and services provided to all adolescents" and "ensure equal access to evidence-based comprehensive sexuality education across provinces and territories." This supports NGO concerns about youth access to confidential health services, accurate information and adolescent health supports.
Structural discrimination, education and child participation - paragraphs 18, 22 and 40(d): The Committee recommended that Canada "put an end to structural discrimination" against Indigenous children and children of African descent, ensure children are heard in official decisions affecting them, and collect disaggregated education data to "develop targeted measures to address systemic discrimination." This aligns with submissions from racial justice organizations, the International Play Association, the Canadian Coalition for the Rights of Children and youth participation advocates.