An Act of Genocide by Karen Stote

Author:Karen Stote
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fernwood Publishing
Published: 2015-10-23T04:00:00+00:00

In this same year, the provincial government created a commission to study mental health services in Alberta. A matter considered by W.R.N. Blair, head of the Blair Commission and former member of the Eugenics Board from 1967 to 1968, was the status and future of the Sterilization Act. Similar to the conclusions reached by McWhirter and Weijer, the commission found that when genetic justifications for sterilization were employed by the Board, evidence of a hereditary predisposition was not always adequate. There were also questions about whether the depressed IQ ratings used to justify sterilization could be ameliorated, and these ratings appeared to have cultural factors associated with them that led some groups, like Native and Métis peoples, to be disproportionately targeted (Blair 1969: 268). In other words, the causal evidence available to the Eugenics Board when deciding whether to recommend sterilization was limited at best. However, the commission fell short of recommending the repeal of the Act (Gibson 1974: 61). Instead, Blair recommended that the legislation be revised to specify appointment qualifications for those nominated to the Eugenics Board, that complete documentation on candidates for sterilization be presented to the Board a reasonable time before it convened to give members the opportunity to review it accordingly and that an executive secretary be appointed to coordinate this flow of information (Blair 1969: 269).

Notwithstanding his recommendations, the Alberta Sterilization Act was repealed. Pressure for repeal came largely from a concern that involuntary sterilization and the “no-consent clause” in the Act were violations of human rights (Gibson 1974: 60–61). Human rights had become part of international discourse by this time and their importance was enshrined through the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights (U.N. General Assembly 1948a). Years later, the struggles waged at home by groups who experienced human rights abuses of their own had finally pushed the federal government to act (Lamberton 2005; MacLennan 2003).1 In 1960, the Canadian Bill of Rights was passed, and this represented the first successful federal attempt to enshrine human rights protections in domestic law (Statutes of Canada 1960). As the Law Reform Commission of Canada stated:

The Canadian Bill of Rights ensures that all persons shall be treated equally before the law … In consideration of international obligations and the arguments advanced … [referring to the dangers of non-consensual sterilization], it is arguable that a valid public interest for sterilization of the mentally handicapped could not be proven. (Law Reform Commission of Canada 1979: 52–55)

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.