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Toronto Star - April 18, 2006
Ex-RCMP cadet wins hearing on rejection
TORONTO - A former RCMP cadet from Toronto, who still dreams of being a Mountie, has won a human rights tribunal hearing on his claim that he was rejected from the force because of discrimination.
Ali Tahmourpour's complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission that he was racially harassed as a cadet at the RCMP's training academy in Regina between July and October 1999 was dismissed as unfounded in July 2003.
The 32-year-old Muslim, who was born in Iran, also had complained that he had been repeatedly singled out as a racial minority by his superiors and had been unfairly evaluated due to systemic discrimination.
His employment was terminated after he had completed 14 out of 22 weeks of training.
Determined to achieve his dream, Tahmourpour has spent the past four years trying to convince the courts that the commission did not conduct a thorough investigation before rejecting his claim.
Tahmourpour won his first victory last year when the Federal Court ordered the Canadian Human Rights Commission to conduct a new investigation which would include consideration of RCMP statistics which he had obtained under federal access to information legislation.
He claimed that these statistics showed a much higher attrition rate for visible minorities than for other recruits.
Tahmourpour had argued, for example, that the RCMP's own statistics for 1996 to 2001 showed a 7 per cent rate of attrition for cadets as a whole, but almost 16 per cent attrition among visible minorities.
Tahmourpour won his second victory last week, when the commission ruled that his complaint should be heard by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.
The commission appointed a conciliator to attempt to resolve the matter but ruled that if a settlement is not reached between the parties within 60 days, "the complaint will be referred directly to the tribunal without returning to the commission."
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Canadian Press – April 27, 2006
Groups call on Ottawa to reconsider
"scandalous" security certificate process
OTTAWA (CP) - Human rights groups are calling on the federal government to reconsider its practice of holding terrorist suspects indefinitely without charge.
They say the security certificates that have been used in a handful of cases, and the secretive process by which they are issued, run contrary to Canada's international human rights commitments.
New Democrat MP Bill Siksay, who has tabled a private member's bill calling for repeal of the legislation, joined Amnesty International Canada and the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations today at a news conference on Parliament Hill.
Siksay and the groups lament the opening of what they call "Guantanamo North," the Kingston (Ont.) Immigration Holding Centre where four terrorist suspects - Mohamed Harkat, Mohamed Mahjoub, Mahmoud Jaballah and Hassan Almrei - are now being held on security certificates.
A fifth suspect, Adil Charkaoui, is free on bail with strict conditions.
The human rights groups say the new Conservative government has given no indication that it is willing to review the security certificate process, under which Harkat has been jailed without charge for 3 1/2 years.
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=6ff7afd1-bbaf-4cca-bffa-4f0db7f4513f&k=18481
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