Law Students, Minister to Attend Demonstration of New Method to Resolve Complaints

Law students from Cole Harbour High School will get a first-hand look at a new way for Nova Scotians to resolve human rights complaints on Thursday, Nov. 22.

The students will join the Minister responsible for the Human Rights Commission Ross Landry and board of commissioners at a demonstration of the dispute resolution conference at the Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia in Cherry Brook, Halifax Regional Municipality.

The new method takes human rights complaints from the traditional adversarial method and brings people together in a room to explore the complaint and how a resolution can be reached. The conference is also designed to instill respect and understanding. The commission adopted the new approach Jan. 1.

"We are proud of the work we are doing and what we have achieved," said Mr. Landry. "This demonstration gives us a forum to showcase the new method. Hopefully it will be a great educational experience for the students and they will see there is a new way of thinking when it comes to human rights."

"This new approach heralds not only substantive differences in how disputes are managed, but is also seeing practical success," said commission executive director and CEO David Shannon.

"Since we started using resolution conferences, our wait time to get cases moving to a point where the real work begins has dropped dramatically. It could have been months or even years; now it is a matter of weeks. We have also cleared the entire backlog of 120 files."

The demonstration, which begins at 10 a.m., is the first step by the commission to take more of its work into communities around the province. The centre is at 10 Cherry Brook Rd.