The Canadian Children's Rights Council Inc. (CCRC); () is a

non-governmental organization A non-governmental organization (NGO) is an independent, typically nonprofit organization that operates outside government control, though it may get a significant percentage of its funding from government or corporate sources. NGOs often focus ...

that is based in

Toronto, Ontario Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

and was founded in 1991. The CCRC describe themselves as a

nonprofit A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, not-for-profit organization, or simply a nonprofit, is a non-governmental (private) legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public, or so ...

, 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.

Activities

The organization researches, educates and advocates in the area of the rights and responsibilities of Canadian children. It has testified at Canadian provincial and federal committees and ministerial consultations. Specifically, the CCRC strives to advocate for children's rights by lobbying the government, intergovernmental and non-governmental agencies with research and solutions regarding violations of Canadian children's rights. With 50 million website visits since launching in 2003, the organization states that its website is the most visited website in Canada on the issues of children's rights and responsibilities. The CCRC offers a virtual library of books, position statements, research articles, and historical and other documents on children's issues such as bullying in Canadian schools;

child abuse Child abuse (also called child endangerment or child maltreatment) is physical abuse, physical, child sexual abuse, sexual, emotional and/or psychological abuse, psychological maltreatment or Child neglect, neglect of a child, especially by a p ...

;

universal education Universal access to education is the ability of all people to have equal opportunity in education, regardless of their social class, race, gender, sexuality, ethnic background or physical and mental disabilities. The term is used both in colle ...

and

health care Health care, or healthcare, is the improvement or maintenance of health via the preventive healthcare, prevention, diagnosis, therapy, treatment, wikt:amelioration, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other disability, physic ...

for children;

parental alienation Parental alienation is a theorized process through which a child becomes estranged from one parent as the result of the psychological manipulation of another parent. The child's estrangement may manifest itself as fear, disrespect or hostility tow ...

; equal shared parenting; the '' Youth Criminal Justice Act'';

adoption Adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting of another, usually a child, from that person's biological or legal parent or parents. Legal adoptions permanently transfer all rights and responsibilities, along with filiation, fro ...

and birth parent identity;

paternity fraud Paternity fraud is one form of misattributed paternity or paternal discrepancy. Specifically, paternity fraud is the intentional misidentification of a child's biological father. Paternity fraud is distinct from other, unintentional misattribut ...

;

corporal punishment A corporal punishment or a physical punishment is a punishment which is intended to cause physical pain to a person. When it is inflicted on Minor (law), minors, especially in home and school settings, its methods may include spanking or Padd ...

;

infanticide Infanticide (or infant homicide) is the intentional killing of infants or offspring. Infanticide was a widespread practice throughout human history that was mainly used to dispose of unwanted children, its main purpose being the prevention of re ...

; and

child abandonment A child () is a human being between the stages of birth and puberty, or between the developmental period of infancy and puberty. The term may also refer to an unborn human being. In English-speaking countries, the legal definition of ''chi ...

laws.

Positions

The organization supports the existence of a national and provincial

commissioner A commissioner (commonly abbreviated as Comm'r) is, in principle, a member of a commission or an individual who has been given a commission (official charge or authority to do something). In practice, the title of commissioner has evolved to incl ...

s on the implementation of the United Nations

Convention on the Rights of the Child The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (commonly abbreviated as the CRC or UNCRC) is an international international human rights treaty which sets out the civil, political, economic, social, health and cultural rights of ch ...

. The group opposes corporal punishment including spanking, and promotes the idea of parent training in alternatives. In reference to a Halifax newborn who was abandoned in a remote field, and six other Ontario babies that were simply thrown in the garbage, the group's president, Grant Wilson, has stated that women who abandon and leave their babies without the necessities of life should be charged with

attempted murder Attempted murder is a crime of attempt in various jurisdictions. Canada Section 239 of the ''Criminal Code'' makes attempted murder punishable by a maximum of life imprisonment. If a gun is used, the minimum sentence is four, five or seve ...

...";The Current; CBC: Feb 8, 2007.
Retrieved 4/2/08 and that Canada's infanticide law should be repealed, as it devalues the lives of children, violates their rights, and is "a license for women to kill babies." In both cases he argues that a defense of diminished capacity could be still used in cases involving post partum depression. Wilson's rationale for this is the reality that Canadian child abandonment cases rarely result in criminal charges being laid. Wilson has stated that women frequently make false allegations of abuse during divorce to secure custody; and that men are just as likely to be the victim of domestic violence because of such violence being underreported. He has also called for tougher penalties, including jail time, for mothers who consistently deprive their children of visitation rights with their fathers. In response to an Ontario court decision which ordered a man continue paying child-support for children he discovered were not biologically his, the organization advocated for mandatory paternity testing of all children at birth in order to prevent paternal discrepancy issues. The grounds on this position is that such a mandatory process would uphold a child's right to have contact with their biological fathers. While the organization is a

children's rights Children's rights or the rights of children are a subset of human rights with particular attention to the rights of special protection and care afforded to minors.

group, one scholar and a few media outlooks view the organization and its president as men's and fathers' rights advocates. Psychologist and academic Erica Burman 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.

References

{{reflist

External links

Canadian Children's Rights Council – Canadian Political Parties and Political Interest Groups
– Web Archive created by the University of Toronto Libraries 1991 establishments in Ontario Children's rights organizations Organizations based in Ontario Organizations established in 1991 Child-related organizations in Canada