A “rights movement” emerged in Canada in the twentieth century. Unlike more expansive social movements, such as the women’s movement, the rights movement is primarily state-oriented. The central pillar of the rights movement is the belief that the state should not be permitted to violate certain basic freedoms and, especially since the 1960s, that the state should actively promote equality in both the public and private realm. Adherents to the rights movement are also identified by their focus on promoting universal rights and freedoms as opposed to those associated with a specific constituency (e.g., children or prisoners). The following discussion, however, traces only one aspect of the history of the rights movement: social movement organizations (or NGOs). In this context a “rights association” is a self-identified “human rights” or “civil liberties” association, such as the Newfoundland-Labrador Human Rights Association or the Association for Civil Liberties.

The Padlock Act and the Gouzenko Affair, as well as similar examples of gross violations of civil liberties by the state, led to the emergence of the first rights movement in Canadian history.  Human rights laws simply did not exist by the 1940s. It was a fact of daily life in Canada that everyone did not enjoy the same rights.  While the federal government laid the groundwork for the espionage commission, thousands of Japanese Canadians were deported to Japan in the aftermath of the Second World War (WWII).  Immigration policies were explicitly racist until 1962 and restrictive covenants (restrictions on the ethnic, racial or religious mix in a neighbourhood) were common. During WWII, Canada was among the world’s least hospitable destinations for Jewish refugees, allowing barely 5000 to enter during the course of the war.  Blacks and many other minorities who sought to enlist were rejected by recruiting centres.  Women did not get the vote in Quebec until 1940, and several minority groups, including Aboriginals, were denied the provincial and federal franchise until well after the war. Without the franchise, individuals could not hold public office, enter certain professions, or serve on a jury.  Minorities were regularly denied licenses to operate businesses. Anti-semitism, segregation amongst blacks and whites in Nova Scotia and Southern Ontario schools, limited economic opportunities for women, and widespread discrimination amongst Aboriginals was a basic reality of life in Canada.

The Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, in particular, led to the creation of several notably abusive federal laws restricting civil liberties. Section 41 (enacted in June 1919) of the Immigration Act allowed officials to deport any alien or Canadian citizen not born in Canada for advocating the overthrow of the government by force. Hundreds of trade unions and communists were eventually deported. In addition, Canada was the only democracy in the world, following the creation of Section 98 of the Criminal Code after the strike, to ban the Communist Party. Three prosecutions emerged from Section 98 before its repeal in 1936, the most famous being the trials of eight members of the Communist Party of Canada (CPC) in 1931.

The trial of the eight CPC leaders represented the high point of activity for the Canadian Labour Defense League, a communist-led organization dedicated to the defense of individual rights. Members of the CLDL raised $160,000 in bail money for the accused, organized rallies and demonstrations, and mobilized a massive petition with over 459,000 signatures calling for the repeal of Section 98. However, unlike those civil liberties groups which emerged in Canada in the 1930s with a mandate to defend the rights of all people irrespective of class, relation, gender, or race, the efforts of the CLDL were limited to defending "only workers and those on the political left; it did not pretend to follow the dictum of making no distinctions about whose liberties it defended."

Section 98 was repealed by the federal government in the 1930s, and replaced with a broader sedition clause in the Criminal Code. In the province of Québec, however, the repeal of Section 98 was greeted with trepidation. Soon after the elimination of Section 98, the Communist Party of Canada began distributing leaflets outside the provincial legislature to the ire of the Premier and Attorney General, Maurice Duplessis. Duplessis, the autocratic Premier of Quebec who claimed that the Bible was sufficient protection for human rights, waged a virtual war against unpopular minorities during his reign from the thirties to the fifties.  Communists were easy targets and Duplessis responded to the elimination of Section 97 with his own legislation, commonly referred to as the Padlock Act. The Padlock Act (as it became known for the practice of closing down a building by placing a padlock on the front door) banned any use of a premises or the publication of material advocating communism. The legislation allowed the Attorney General to confiscate property and close down the premises where communist groups were active. The broad scope of the legislation allowed it to be used against a variety of unpopular minority groups in the predominantly catholic french-speaking province, including Jehovah’s Witnesses and Jewish groups.  The law, passed in the 1930s, became a rallying point for civil libertarians who considered it the most offensive piece of legislation violating individual rights in a generation. The law was so vague that it was used against unionists, Jews, Witnesses and people on the political Left.  Victims could only appeal to the Attorney-General who, conveniently, was Duplessis (the law was defeated in the Supreme Court of Canada in 1957).