Your vote is your megaphone. Your ballot is your power. Let’s put human rights first and #VoteForRights.
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The 2025 Federal Election is a defining moment for Canada. Climate justice, Indigenous rights, corporate accountability, affordable housing, racial justice, gender equality, refugee protection, and human rights in Canada and around the world are all at stake.
The next federal government must have justice, dignity and equality as its foundational principles. The stakes have never been higher and the challenges are immense. Urgent action is needed. More than a sum of its parts, this call to action represents a human rights platform. It is an opportunity for the next government to ensure that justice, dignity, and equality are not just ideals but are the core of its polices.
In order to advance Indigenous rights and self-determination, issues related to Indian Act discrimination, free prior and informed consent, child welfare, residential schools, language and culture and missing and murdered Indigenous women must be addressed and made paramount.
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees fundamental rights. Yet, the increasing use of Section 33, the notwithstanding clause, threatens these protections particularly for 2SLGBTQQIA+ communities.
People of African descent represent a distinct group whose rights must be promoted and protect. A Canadian Employment Equity report underlines this call. A class action by Black federal workers speaks to systemic discrimination. And the UN has declared the International Decade for People of African Descent.
Canada must combat anti-refugee and anti-migrant discrimination and discriminatory discourse such as implying migrants are to blame for the increasing cost of living. While governments have the right to design immigration policies, they cannot violate migrants’ and refugees’ rights.
Canadian multinationals and importers are implicated in the persecution of Human Rights and Environmental Defenders. The abuses include killings, sexual violence, water contamination, land grabs, and forced labour. From food we eat, to clothes we wear, to metals in our phones, we are all implicated.
Canada is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, and the Canadian Arctic is warming four times as fast. The right to life, health, food, water, housing, education, decent work, cultural rights, and the right to a healthy environment are all at unprecedented risk.
Housing, as fundamental human right, is recognized in Canada’s National Housing Strategy Act (NHSA). Despite this, Canada is in the midst of a deepening housing crisis. Homelessness is on the rise with at least 235,000 people experiencing homelessness annually.
Poverty and inequality in Canada is a crisis that can no longer be ignored. Canada has to act now to radically and rapidly reduce inequality, decolonize the economy and invest in poverty reduction by taxing the ultra-rich and ending extreme wealth and power concentration in the hands of a few.
Canada has flouted its international arms control obligations by transferring weapons to actors that pose a substantial risk of using those arms in serious human-rights violations. Canada has also failed to fully implement its obligations under the UN Arms Trade Treaty (ATT).
Human rights are for everyone, everywhere, always. They are tools we use to care for each other and make our world safer, healthier, and fairer for everyone.
It should be. But too often, these rights are ignored, threatened, or denied. That’s why we need to hold our candidates accountable — no matter their political stripes — and make sure they protect your rights.
#VoteForRights isn’t just a slogan—it’s a movement to make sure your voice is heard, and your rights are protected. Because when we vote louder, we build a Canada that cares for everyone.
Not voting isn’t just sitting this one out—it’s handing power to those who use hate, fear and scapegoating to look stronger and get richer.
Wildfires, floods, and heatwaves will worsen while politicians roll back climate policies.
Corporate landlords and speculators will keep driving prices up, pushing more people into homelessness.
Activists and Indigenous land defenders will face even harsher crackdowns.
Corporations will keep dodging taxes while the cost-of-living skyrockets.
Women, 2SLGBTQQIA+, and marginalized communities lose protections.
Be part of a nationwide movement demanding a #RightsFirst election. Share our content, attend events, and spread the word.
Politicians work for you. Demand clear answers. Message candidates or tag them with questions on social media using the hashtag #VoteForRights.
Voting is the most powerful way to make change last. Make sure you’re registered and ready.
Extreme weather events exacerbated by climate change and the burning of fossil fuels are displacing a greater number of communities all over Canada each year, with a disproportionate impact on the health and socio-economic conditions of children, women, Indigenous Peoples and other vulnerable groups. In a world dangerously off track to meet global temperature goals, costs related to climate disasters are expected to rise to an estimated $25 Billion by 2025. With Canada warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, and the Canadian Arctic warming four times as fast, human rights to life, health, food, water, housing, education, decent work, cultural rights, and the right to a healthy environment, are all at unprecedented risk.
Fossil fuels are the unequivocal source of this crisis. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the continued exploitation and expansion of oil, coal and gas have already had profound and cascading impacts across the full spectrum of human rights. From extraction to combustion, the detrimental human rights impact of Canada’s fossil fuel-based economy is well-documented. ‘Man-camps’ housing thousands of oil sands workers, as well as other resource extraction (oil, gas, mining) projects have been associated to increased and systemic violence against Indigenous women, prompting the National Inquiry on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls to call upon the federal, provincial, and territorial governments to further investigate the relationship between longstanding resource extraction projects and violence against Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people. Canada’s longstanding campaign of surveillance against Wet’suwet’en land defenders is also intimately linked to the fossil fuel economy.
Human rights and the environment are interdependent. A healthy environment is necessary for the full realization of a range of human rights, such as the rights to life and water. Yet the human right to a healthy environment cannot be achieved without upholding other fundamental human rights, such as the right to free speech, the right to protest, the right to health, and the rights of Indigenous Peoples, alongside robust environmental protections.
Just south of Canadian border, the recently elected United States government’s outright rejection of climate law and policy has been coupled with escalating hostility against human rights defenders and migrants, attacks on independent science and international institutions, and the increasing dissemination of misinformation and disinformation. Canada’s next government must avert this risk and bolster climate action at the economy-wide scale to effectively protect the public from environmental, economic and social harms linked to the climate crisis.
Extreme weather events exacerbated by climate change and the burning of fossil fuels are displacing a greater number of communities all over Canada each year, with a disproportionate impact on the health and socio-economic conditions of children, women, Indigenous Peoples and other vulnerable groups. In a world dangerously off track to meet global temperature goals, costs related to climate disasters are expected to rise to an estimated $25 Billion by 2025. With Canada warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, and the Canadian Arctic warming four times as fast, human rights to life, health, food, water, housing, education, decent work, cultural rights, and the right to a healthy environment, are all at unprecedented risk.
Fossil fuels are the unequivocal source of this crisis. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the continued exploitation and expansion of oil, coal and gas have already had profound and cascading impacts across the full spectrum of human rights. From extraction to combustion, the detrimental human rights impact of Canada’s fossil fuel-based economy is well-documented. ‘Man-camps’ housing thousands of oil sands workers, as well as other resource extraction (oil, gas, mining) projects have been associated to increased and systemic violence against Indigenous women, prompting the National Inquiry on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls to call upon the federal, provincial, and territorial governments to further investigate the relationship between longstanding resource extraction projects and violence against Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people. Canada’s longstanding campaign of surveillance against Wet’suwet’en land defenders is also intimately linked to the fossil fuel economy.
Human rights and the environment are interdependent. A healthy environment is necessary for the full realization of a range of human rights, such as the rights to life and water. Yet the human right to a healthy environment cannot be achieved without upholding other fundamental human rights, such as the right to free speech, the right to protest, the right to health, and the rights of Indigenous Peoples, alongside robust environmental protections.
Just south of Canadian border, the recently elected United States government’s outright rejection of climate law and policy has been coupled with escalating hostility against human rights defenders and migrants, attacks on independent science and international institutions, and the increasing dissemination of misinformation and disinformation. Canada’s next government must avert this risk and bolster climate action at the economy-wide scale to effectively protect the public from environmental, economic and social harms linked to the climate crisis.
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