The Right to Sport: A Human Rights Reading of the FOSCC Final Report

This is Play for Dignity's human rights reading of the FOSCC Final Report. We see all 98 Calls to Action as rights-grounded — some more directly than others. This tool is an interpretive resource, not legal advice.

Canada's sport ecosystem stands at a critical juncture. The Future of Sport in Canada Commission's Final Report delivers 98 Calls to Action that together constitute a mandate to take a rights-based approach to Canadian sport reform. One of the most impactful steps Canada could take at this moment is to establish a human rights-based vision for sport — renewing Canadian Sport Policy and Programs so they are grounded in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and aligned with Canada's international commitments. Every one of these 98 Calls to Action can be understood as a human rights obligation. This tool makes that case explicit — connecting each call to the Charter protections, international treaties, and Indigenous rights frameworks that give it legal and moral force.

Why does this matter? The current policy framework uses the language of dignity, safety, and inclusion — exactly the right values. But values are aspirational. Rights create legal and institutional obligations. Until the sport system is built around rights — not just values — compliance will remain optional and progress will remain uneven. A rights-based approach provides a principled basis for prioritization, enforceable standards of accountability, and a unifying through-line for the entire system. It shifts the conversation from who gets funded to what we are building together and why.

Foundational Human Rights Principles

These four principles underpin all human rights — they are the conceptual foundation on which the PANEL and AAAQ frameworks rest.

Universality

Human rights belong to every person without exception. The right to sport applies to all Canadians regardless of identity, location, ability, or circumstance.

Inalienability

Human rights cannot be taken away, surrendered, or forfeited. An athlete's right to safe, dignified participation in sport cannot be waived by contract, policy, or institutional convenience.

Indivisibility

All human rights are equally important and cannot be ranked. The right to safe sport is inseparable from the rights to equality, dignity, and cultural participation.

Interdependence & Interrelatedness

The realization of one right depends on the realization of others. Safe sport requires equality; equality requires participation; participation requires accessibility.

A note on Indigenous legal orders: These principles are drawn from international human rights law — a framework rooted in Western liberal traditions. In the Canadian context, Indigenous legal orders grounded in relationships to land, kinship, ceremony, and reciprocal responsibility predate and operate alongside this framework. This tool applies international human rights principles in dialogue with — not in place of — Indigenous rights traditions, consistent with the FOSCC Final Report's centring of Indigenous self-determination.

Legal & Policy Grounding

The mappings in this tool are not aspirational — they are grounded in existing law. Canada has ratified international treaties, enacted domestic legislation, and affirmed political declarations that together create clear expectations for sport as a site of human rights realization. The instruments listed below form the legal and policy foundation on which every mapping in this tool rests. They represent obligations Canada has already accepted — the question is not whether these commitments exist, but whether our sport system is organized to honour them.

Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Domestic Legislation & Policy

International Human Rights Instruments

Canada has ratified UNCRC, CRPD, CEDAW, ICESCR, ICCPR, CERD. In 2024, the UN Special Rapporteur on Cultural Rights published the first dedicated report affirming that sport participation falls within the scope of cultural rights under international law.

Canada's International Engagement

Centre for Sport and Human Rights — Advisory Council member (joined November 2024)
Canada was an observer to the Enlarged Partial Agreement on Sport (EPAS) of the Council of Europe, though it has since withdrawn from this arrangement.

Source Document

Commissioner Lise Maisonneuve, Future of Sport in Canada Commission, "Transforming Sport in Canada: Time for Action," March 24, 2026

The PANEL and AAAQ Frameworks

PANEL: Five Dimensions of Human Rights

The PANEL framework was developed by the Scottish Human Rights Commission as a practical tool for applying a Human Rights-Based Approach (HRBA). It defines the process principles — how reform should happen — ensuring that rights-holders participate in decisions, that duty-bearers are held accountable, and that legal protections are enforceable. PANEL is now widely used by governments, the UN, and civil society internationally as the standard for operationalizing human rights in policy and practice.

P Participation

The right to have a voice in decisions that affect your life and communities.
A Accountability

Systems must be transparent and responsible for upholding rights.
N Non-Discrimination

Equal treatment without prejudice based on identity or circumstance.
E Empowerment

Building capacity and agency to claim and exercise rights.
L Legality

Rights protections grounded in law and enforceable mechanisms.

AAAQ: Four Dimensions of Rights Realization

The AAAQ framework originates from General Comment No. 14 (2000) of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which interpreted the right to health under the ICESCR. It defines the content standard — what the realization of a right actually looks like — and has since been applied across economic, social, and cultural rights including education, water, and housing. Applied to sport, AAAQ asks whether opportunities are available, accessible, culturally acceptable, and of sufficient quality to meet human rights standards.

Av Availability

Resources and services must exist and be accessible to all.
Ac Accessibility

Physical, economic, and informational access without barriers.
Ae Acceptability

Services and policies must be culturally appropriate and respectful.
Q Quality

Standards that ensure effective, dignified, and safe outcomes.

98 Recommendations

8 International Commitments

5 Charter Sections

1 Unified Vision

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Showing 98 of 98

Methodology

Each call to action has been mapped to the single PANEL principle and AAAQ dimension that best captures its primary human rights significance. In practice, many calls engage multiple principles simultaneously — a recommendation addressing athlete safety, for example, implicates accountability, non-discrimination, and legality. The mapping reflects the dominant dimension to support analysis and navigation; it is not intended to suggest that other dimensions are irrelevant.

Duty-Bearers & Rights-Holders

A human rights-based approach fundamentally changes our relationship to sport. When sport is recognized as a right — grounded in the right to participate in cultural life (ICESCR, Art. 15) and affirmed by the UN Special Rapporteur on Cultural Rights (A/79/299, 2024) — it follows that there are duty-bearers responsible for realizing that right (governments, sport organizations, institutions) and rights-holders entitled to claim it. Rights-holders include all of us, with particular attention to those furthest from realizing their rights: Indigenous Peoples, persons with disabilities, women and girls, racialized communities, children and youth, and 2SLGBTQ+ communities. This reframes not only how we govern sport, but what we expect sport to achieve. The answer is grounded in the foundation of all human rights: dignity.

On athletes: All 98 Calls to Action are understood to ultimately impact athletes. Athletes are therefore not listed as a distinct rights-holder category on individual calls. The rights-holder tags shown on each card reflect the specific communities most directly engaged by that call beyond the universal athlete population.

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Select any card to view the full analysis, including implementation timeline, duty-bearers, and rights-holders.