Category: Community posts

An Online Makeover for TRAC Tenant Resource & Advisory Centre

Community posts

By Andrew SakamotoTRAC Logo (blue)
Executive Director, TRAC

TRAC provides information on residential tenancy law to tenants and advocates across British Columbia. Our services include a Tenant Infoline, legal education workshops, multilingual publications and a website/social media.  We work with all levels of government, other community organizations and the general public to promote the legal protection of tenants and the availability of affordable rental housing in BC.

As a small organization with a provincial mandate, we rely on technology to help us educate communities across the province.  One way we do is by making our resources accessible through Clicklaw.

Recently, we also launched our new website!  The design is modern and clean, and our content has been organized in a way that allows users to quickly find answers to their legal questions.

Here are some of the highlights of our new site:

  • Tenant Survival Guide – One of the most popular legal publications in the province, our TSG offers a comprehensive yet plain language overview of tenants’ and landlords’ rights and responsibilities.
  • Template Letters –When issues arise during a tenancy, tenants should communicate their concerns to their landlord on paper. TRAC offers 27 template letters to use as a starting point.
  • Tenant Info Pamphlets – TRAC has created a pamphlet that covers the fundamentals of residential tenancy law, and translated it into 18 languages. For tenants whose first language is not English, this is where to look.
  • All content pages on our website can be printed as nicely formatted fact sheets. Online information is important, but so are hardcopy resources. Feel free to print and distribute our fact sheets to friends, family members, clients and landlords

New Law Reform Reports from West Coast LEAF

Community posts
By Laura Track
Legal Director, West Coast LEAF

 

West Coast LEAF has published two new law reform reports in the last couple of months, and we hope you’ll check them out!

CyberMisogynyIn June, we released #CyberMisogyny: Using and Strengthening Canadian Legal Responses to Gendered Hate and Harassment Online. Cyber misogyny is the term we use to describe sexualized bullying, harassment, and hate speech directed at women and girls online. While harassment and discrimination against women and girls are nothing new, the Internet has created new opportunities to perpetuate harassment and abuse widely and anonymously, and the law has been slow to respond.

We analyzed five common manifestations of cyber misogyny:

  • “revenge porn” (non-consensual sharing of intimate images, often by an ex-partner)
  • “sexting” among youth
  • child sexual exploitation
  • cyberstalking
  • gender-based hate speech online.

We provide an overview of the current legal responses available to victims of these forms of cyber misogyny under criminal, civil, and human rights law, and make 35 recommendations for how Canadian and BC law and policy could be strengthened to better protect the equality rights of women, girls, and other vulnerable communities online.

Able MothersThen in September, we released Able Mothers: The intersection of parenting, disability and the law. This report takes a critical look at the discriminatory misconceptions and stereotypes that can influence decisions affecting mothers with disabilities. It also makes recommendations for law and policy reforms to better protect the dignity, equality, and rights of disabled mothers and women seeking to become mothers.

Governments have a legal obligation to provide the supports necessary so that parents can provide a safe and nurturing environment for their children. However, our research shows that government is failing to meet this obligation, with devastating results for both children and their disabled mothers. Rather than removing children from their disabled parents and placing them in foster care, we believe that government should be providing the supports these parents need, in the best interests of their children.