Judy Graves has worked with Vancouver’s street population since 1974, and in the Downtown Eastside since 1979. She coordinates the Tenant Assistance Program at City Hall, serving low-income tenants and the literally homeless. The Program has focused on literal homelessness since 1995, when declining vacancy rates, increasing land values, service cutbacks, and inadequate welfare support combined to make homelessness very visible in the streets of Vancouver.

To understand the causes of homelessness, and to meet the needs of the people who live rough, Judy walks overnight in alleys, underground parking, stairwells and parks to meet the homeless “at home.” Here she wakes them and listens. This listening in the dark led to the design of the Outreach Pilot Project, which has now become a province-wide Program of BC Housing. For this Program, a person is woken where he or she sleeps at 6:00 am and is given a welfare income and a room of their own to live in the same afternoon. In one day, the person moves from absolute homelessness to permanent tenancy.

The Reg Robson Award is given annually to those who have demonstrated a substantial and long-lasting contribution to civil liberties in B.C. and Canada. The award is named after long time BCCLA President Reg Robson. Past recipients include Maher Arar and Monia Mazigh, Joe Arvay, Q.C., Tara Singh Hayer (posthumously), Murray and Peter Coren, Kim Bolan and Janine Fuller, among others.

The BCCLA is pleased to present the Reg Robson Civil Liberties Award to Judy Graves for personally ensuring the life, liberty and security of our society's most marginalized citizens.

The BCCLA made oral submissions to the Supreme Court of Canada in B.C. Transit, et al v. Canadian Federation of Students, a case that
involves a constitutional challenge to the advertising policies of Translink and BC Transit,
which allow for commercial advertising but not political advertising on public transit vehicles.

Grace Pastine, Litigation Director: “Government should not be able to escape the reach of the Charter by creating quasi-governmental bodies to carry out government work. The BCCLA has long held the position that it is not the business of government to approve or disapprove of what Canadians say unless the government can demonstrate that to do so is justifiable in a free and democratic society. We don’t believe the government can demonstrate that in this case.”

The BCCLA argued that the Charter applies to the advertising policies of Translink and BC
Transit, and that the advertising policies unreasonably infringe the respondents’ rights of
freedom of expression. Chris Sanderson, Q.C. and Chelsea Wilson of Lawson Lundell represented the BCCLA.

The BCCLA also made oral submissions to the Supreme Court of Canada in Minister of Justice, et al. v. Omar Ahmed Khadr. Omar Khadr is a Canadian citizen who has been detained by the United States in Guantanamo Bay since 2002 and has been put on trial in a proceeding before a Military Commission that is a violation of international law. Prior to charges being laid, Canadian officials interviewed Mr. Khadr and passed on summaries of the information collected to the American government.

The BCCLA argued that by gathering evidence from Mr. Khadr and sharing it with American military authorities, Canada’s complicity in the proceedings violates Mr. Khadr’s Charter rights to life, liberty and security of the person. Joe Arvay, of Arvay Finlay Barristers, and Sujit Choudhry, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, represent the BCCLA.

Read the BCCLA's legal argument

The BCCLA condemned the Liberal Government’s resolution to adopt provincial electoral boundaries that will undermine constitutional principles of voter parity.

The Government’s resolution would permit 85 provincial ridings with 10 of them diverging more than 25% below the average population in a riding. BCCLA President Jason Gratl: “If the government proceeds with this plan, the BCCLA will go to court to seek orders protecting constitutionally guaranteed voting rights of all British Columbians from this unconscionable attack on fundamental freedoms.”

Section 9(1) of the existing B.C. Electoral Boundaries Commission Act provides that “the principle of representation by population be achieved”.  Boundaries may diverge only up to 25% unless “very special circumstances” exist, a constitutional standard set by the Supreme Court of Canada.

The Electoral Boundaries Commission, the independent body set up to recommend electoral boundaries chaired by Mr. Justice Bruce Cohen, specifically rejected the Liberal Government’s approach because it found that “special circumstances” exist in only four ridings. As the Commission quoted from an Alberta Court of Appeal case on point: "No argument for effective representation of one group legitimizes under-representation of another group."

The BCCLA has stood firmly against erosion of equality of voting rights throughout its history.
In the 1980’s, the BCCLA launched Dixon v. Attorney General of B.C., a case that affirmed
the constitutional principle requiring effective parity of voting power.

7:00 pm – Saturday, April 19, 2008
UBC Robson Square Theatre, 800 Robson Street, Vancouver

BCCLA Board member Michael Byers analyzes the role of the Canadian Armed Forces in Afghanistan within the context of applicable Canadian and international law. Dr. Byers will examine whether the Canadian practice of transferring people detained in Afghanistan to the custody of US and/or Afghan authorities, thereby exposing them to the risk of torture, denial of due process or other abuses, violates these laws.

FREE. Seating limited. Call 604-822-1444 to preregister for one or more lectures.
More information

Wings of Liberty

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