Institute for Migrant Rights
Railway line at Cianjur station, c. 1890 · KITLV, CC BY 4.0

Migration Jurisprudence from the South › Canada

Toussaint v. Canada

UN Human Rights Committee · Canada · 2018-07-24 · International body

Citation: CCPR/C/123/D/2348/2014
Type of case: Constitutional and human rights
Outcome: Decided for the migrant side

Question

Did excluding an irregular migrant from federal health coverage breach her right to life?

What the court decided

Yes. Denying coverage where her life was at risk breached the rights to life and to non-discrimination.

In plain language

A woman from Grenada living in Canada without status was refused health coverage when she was seriously ill. The UN Human Rights Committee said this put her life at risk and broke the treaty.

Dalam bahasa sederhana

Seorang perempuan dari Grenada yang tinggal di Kanada tanpa status ditolak jaminan kesehatan saat sakit parah. Komite HAM PBB menyatakan ini membahayakan nyawanya dan melanggar perjanjian.

Pertanyaan: Apakah mengecualikan migran tanpa dokumen dari jaminan kesehatan federal melanggar hak hidupnya?

What happened afterwards

  • 2018-07-24: Views adopted.

Sources

Open this decision in the interactive collection (compare, filter, Indonesian view, downloads).

Cite as: Institute for Migrant Rights (2026), Migration Jurisprudence from the South, version 0.1, https://theimr.org/court-decisions/d/hrc-toussaint-2018/. This page summarizes a court decision for research and advocacy; it is not legal advice.

For researchers

This collection of decisions is built for empirical legal scholarship and socio-legal research on migration and the rights of migrant workers, as well as for advocacy.

The coded variables support statistical analysis in law: cross-national comparison, regression and event-history designs, and law and economics questions such as how recruitment fees, wage protection and limits on changing employer affect migrant workers. The data can be downloaded for replication.

Keywords: case law; jurisprudence; judicial decisions; comparative constitutional law; courts and migration; judicial behavior; litigation outcomes; refugee law; non-refoulement; citizenship and nationality; empirical legal studies; empirical legal scholarship; quantitative legal research; statistical analysis in law; law and economics; law and economics of migration; comparative law; socio-legal studies; legal pluralism; migration law; labor migration; migrant workers’ rights; human rights law; access to justice; Global South; Asia; Africa; Middle East; Latin America; Indonesia; open data; replication data.