B.C. Human Rights Commissioner details government action, inaction on recommendations

B.C. Human Rights Commissioner Kasari Govender speaks during a press conference in Vancouver on March 7, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

British Columbia’s Office of the Human Rights Commissioner says the provincial government has made “progress” on more than half of its recommendations since 2019.

Human Rights Commissioner Kasari Govender released her office’s “Where We Stand” report Tuesday, detailing her work in her first five-year term between 2019 and 2024.

The commissioner’s office was established in 2019, and the report notes how “the world — and the human rights of people in B.C. — was thrown into chaos" by the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit seven months later.

The Human Rights Commissioner’s office has made 159 recommendations to public bodies in B.C. since 2019, in 18 letters to the government and three reports.

It found the B.C. government had “fully implemented” 18 of its recommendations and partially implemented 74, while 67 had not been acted upon.

It said overall that there had been “progress” on 58 per cent of the commissioner’s recommendations.

The provincial government fully implemented only one of 37 recommendations in the commissioner’s report into hate incidents during the COVID-19 pandemic, released in 2023.

That saw the Attorney General’s Ministry implement a recommendation to reform Crown policy “to emphasize the strong public interest in prosecuting hate crimes,” by pursuing “a broader range of prosecutions of hate-related incidents.”

But the ministry didn’t implement a call for a high-level position to prevent and respond to hate incidents, or commit to producing a “whole-of-government strategy and action plan on addressing hate.”

Nor did the Ministry of Education act upon the commissioner’s plea to “significantly expand” school curriculums to empower students in kindergarten through grade 12 to identify “combat hate and extremism.”

The commissioner’s 2021 report titled “Equity is safer: Human rights considerations for policing reform in British Columbia” made 29 recommendations, of which the government fully implemented one, partially implemented 15 and didn’t act upon 13.

Among the policing report’s unimplemented recommendations were empowering the Privacy Commissioner to investigate complaints about police data collection, and calls for an “unbiased policing standard” focused on traffic stops to eliminate bias.

The report also recommended an end to police school liaison programs, which was partially implemented.

The policing reform report also urged the immediate expansion of the civilian-led Independent Investigations Office’s mandate to include sexual assault investigations. This was not implemented.

The Human Rights Commissioner’s report said there were “no statistically significant trends” around which recommendations were implemented and which were not.

The report said “simpler” requests involving single actions and “fewer duty holders” had better uptake, while noting that “unsurprisingly, recommendations on topics that align with ongoing government priorities seem to receive more attention.”

The report said that the Human Rights Commissioner made 33 recommendations to the government that were covered by non-disclosure agreements, seven of which were fully implemented.

This report by Darryl Greer, The Canadian Press, was first published May 27, 2025.