The Canadian Children's Rights Council Inc. (CCRC); (french: Conseil canadien des droits des enfants inc.) is a

non-governmental organization A non-governmental organization (NGO) or non-governmental organisation (see American and British English spelling differences#-ise, -ize (-isation, -ization), spelling differences) is an organization that generally is formed independent from g ...

that is based in

Toronto, Ontario Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tota ...

and was founded in 1991. The CCRC describe themselves 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.

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 their 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, 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, sexual, and/or psychological maltreatment or neglect of a child or children, especially by a parent or a caregiver. Child abuse may include any act or failure to ...

;

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 coll ...

and

health care Health care or healthcare is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health ...

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 The ''Youth Criminal Justice Act'' (YCJA; french: Loi sur le système de justice pénale pour les adolescents) (the ''Act'') is a Canadian statute, which came into effect on April 1, 2003. It covers the prosecution of youths for criminal offen ...

; adoption and birth parent identity;

paternity fraud Paternity fraud, also known as misattributed paternity or paternal discrepancy, occurs when a man is incorrectly identified as the biological father of a child. The underlying assumption of "paternity fraud" is that the mother deliberately miside ...

; corporal punishment;

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 is the prevention of resou ...

; and

child abandonment Child abandonment is the practice of relinquishing interests and claims over one's offspring in an illegal way, with the intent of never resuming or reasserting guardianship. The phrase is typically used to describe the physical abandonment of a ...

laws.

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

. 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 seven ...

...";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 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 Erica Burman (born 1960) is a critical developmental psychology, development psychologist based in the United Kingdom. While little known in the developmental psychology research community, her work has been a conceptual resource for critiques of ...

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 The Canadian Coalition for the Rights of Children (CCRC) is one of Canada's foremost national children's rights advocacy groups, dating back to 1989. The coalition consists of more than fifty non-governmental organizations. In 1991, the Canadian ...

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