Rights of Indigenous Peoples
Indian Act
Know Your Rights
Criminal Law
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Fair Decision Making
If you have been discriminated against and the Canadian Human Rights Act applies, you can make a complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC).
This should be done no later than a year after the discrimination happened. There is no fee to make a complaint. You do not need a lawyer, but you can choose to hire one.
The role of the CHRC is to see if they can accept a complaint, if a complaint is accepted to try to settle it by agreement between the parties and if a complaint is not settled decide if it should be sent to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.
To make a complaint, you start by completing a complaint form. You can do this online or you can download the form and mail or email it to the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC).
On the form you provide basic information about yourself and your contact information. You then fill in information about what happened. This includes who discriminated against you, when it happened and what grounds the discrimination was based on.
You also provide more details about what happened and how it affected you. You tell the CHRC if you are interested in resolving the complaint by going to mediation.
The CHRC decides if the complaint falls under the Canadian Human Rights Act. There are many reasons why a complaint cannot be considered by the CHRC. This includes when the complaint is:
- about a provincially regulated business or the provincial government
- based on a ground that is not protected by the Act
- made to harass someone
If the CHRC is going to deal with your complaint, they get the other party to respond to your complaint. The other party tells their side of the story. You then get a chance to respond to what they have said.
In most cases after this the CHRC will first try to help the parties come to an agreement about the complaint. They provide mediators for free to help with this. If you reach an agreement the CHRC needs to approve it.
If no agreement is reached the CHRC will investigate the complaint. They will gather more evidence if needed. A report about your case will be prepared. You and the other party will see the report and can comment on it. After this the CHRC can decide to:
- ask for more information
- not deal with the complaint
- deal with the complaint
- require the parties to try again to settle the case
- send the case to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal
- dismiss the complaint
