Equality Rights Monitor - We're watching you!

For Immediate Release

LEAF Launches a New Website to Monitor Equality Rights

http://www.equalityrightscentral.com/

goes live September 29, 2010

September 29, 2010, Toronto – September 29, 2010 at noon (EST) is the public launch date of the Equality Rights Central (“ERC”) website, the first-of-its-kind online resource in Canada, to monitor developments in equality law. 

The ERC is sponsored by LEAF, the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund, building on LEAF’s 25 years of expertise in advancing equality rights law and policy in Canada.

“It has been very exciting to see this project come together, and this is just the beginning, as equality rights advocates use it and contribute to it,” says the project’s coordinator, LEAF Staff Lawyer, Tamar Witelson.  

The ERC will monitor all equality, human rights and discrimination issues, primarily in lower courts and tribunals.  It will feature recently launched cases, equality-related news and analysis, legislative reform with an equality impact, and a nationwide events calendar.  “Resources like examples of written factums from equality cases have gotten very enthusiastic feedback so far,” says Witelson.

LEAF Legal Director, Joanna Birenbaum says, “the ERC will help equality advocates to network and share information and resources to develop test cases” 

“There is already discussion on the site about the meaning of consent in sexual assault cases when a person is unconscious; whether the federal government has to make its websites more accessible to people with visual impairments; and the equality implications of challenges to the Criminal Code provisions against polygamy and prostitution-related activity,” says Birenbaum.

The ERC idea has been in development for three years, with funding from the law foundations of British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, and New Brunswick, as well as the LEAF Foundation.

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For more information, go online at:

http://www.equalityrightscentral.com/

or contact:

Tamar Witelson                                                                         Joanna Birenbaum

LEAF Staff Lawyer                                                                  LEAF Litigation Director

(416) 595-7170 ext. 231 (office)                                                 (416) 595-7170 ext. 223 (office)

(416) 587-1895 (cell)                                                                 (647) 500-3005 (cell)

t.witelson@leaf.ca                                                                     j.birenbaum@leaf.ca

http://www.equalityrightscentral.com/