Restraining Equality: Human Rights Commissions in Canada.

• Position: Book Review

R.B. Howe & D. Johnson, Restraining Equality: Human Rights Commissions in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. Pp. xvii, 193.

This book examines the history and organization of human rights commissions with a specific focus on the impact of fiscal restraint. Howe and Johnson argue that, as a result of reduced funding, human rights commissions have had increasingly to adopt a multi-faceted approach to their mandates, functioning as promoters and enforcers of human rights. Although the authors look mainly at state influences, they do not discount the major impact that private actors have had on the functioning of human rights commissions.

The first two chapters discuss the history and organization of Canadian human rights commissions. Howe and Johnson attribute their rapid development to a rise in equality rights consciousness. Their discussion relies mainly on the Ontario model, with occasional references to the models of Quebec, British Columbia, and the federal government. The remainder of the book examines the impact that fiscal restraint has had on programs during the 1980s and 1990s, how commissions coped with restraint, and the tensions beneath human rights policies. The authors also discuss provincial variations in fiscal restraint. Such variations are based on provincial revenues, the relative size of minorities, the presence of women in cabinets, the political party in power, interest group pressures, and the administrative structure of commissions.

Commissions have dealt with fiscal restraint by practising what Howe and Johnson refer to as self-reform; that is, redesigning their structures. Introducing new case management techniques and altering educational programs has accomplished this, in part. Some contemporary theorists argue that this trend is indicative of a deliberate effort to reinvent government bodies to conform to market values. Howe and...