Canadian Children's Rights Council

The Canadian Children's Rights Council Inc. (French: Conseil canadien des droits des enfants inc.) is a non-governmental organization that is based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and was founded in 1991. It describes itself as a nonprofit educational and advocacy organization dedicated to supporting the rights and responsibilities of Canadian children and providing critical analysis of governments' policies at all levels of government in Canada.^[1]

Despite portraying itself as an organization that works for children's rights, some scholars have described it as more concerned with men's and father's rights.

Activities

The organization researches, educates and advocates in the area of the rights and responsibilities of Canadian children.^[1] It lobbies the government, intergovernmental and NGOs about the issues related to their mandate, and have testified at Canadian provincial and federal committees and ministerial consultations.^[2][3][4]

Site

Their website hosts a virtual library of books, position statements, historical and other documents, on subjects such as implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, parental alienation and parental alienation syndrome, infanticide, joint custody following divorce, paternity fraud, corporal punishment, and female sex offenders.

The organization states that their website is the most visited website in Canada on the issues of children's rights and responsibilities.^[1]

Positions

The organization supports the existence of a national and provincial commissioners on the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.^[5] The group opposes corporal punishment including spanking, and promotes the idea of parent training in alternatives.^[1] The group's president, Grant Wilson, has stated "he believes women who abandon their babies should be charged with attempted murder...",^[6] and that Canada's infanticide law should be repealed, as it devalues the lives of children, violates their rights, and is "a licence for women to kill babies."^[7] In both cases he argues that a defense of diminished capacity could be still used in cases involving post partum depression.^[6][7]

Wilson has stated that women frequently make false allegations of abuse during divorce, and that men are equally likely to be the victim of domestic violence.^[3] He has also called for tougher penalties, including for jail time, for mothers who deny fathers visitation rights with their children,^[8][9] and for mandatory paternity testing of all children at birth in order to prevent paternal discrepancy issues.^[10]

While the organization positions itself as a children's rights group, scholars and the media view the group and its president as men's^[4][8] and fathers' rights advocates.^[11][12] One academic comments that the group "has appropriated a discourse of children's rights as an anti-feminist strategy" and has adopted the acronym of the Canadian Coalition for the Rights of Children.^[12]

References