What the Code says

A required office with no replacement mechanism

Four provisions matter, and they are quoted in full below so nothing depends on how this page characterises them.

The duty is mandatory — shall designate. The closing words also mean a chairperson whose term simply expires stays in office until replaced. Expiry, on its own, creates no gap.

That is the entire provision. The Code does not say the vice chairperson assumes the chairperson’s functions during a vacancy, and it creates no office of acting chairperson.

This is the gap. Every other seat on the Commission has an express mid-term replacement route. The chairperson — the one office the Code makes mandatory — is carved out of it.

The Code plainly contemplates the Commission continuing to work while seats are empty. It says nothing about the chair being one of them.

The record

The office has emptied twice

Both vacancies ended the same way: eventually, cabinet designated someone. Neither was governed by any rule about how long that should take.

Combined time without a designated chairperson: about 36 months.

Why it matters

A human rights body should be constituted the way its own statute says

The Commission decides whether Manitobans’ discrimination complaints proceed. The Code makes the chairperson a mandatory office and assigns that office functions. When it empties, the Commission is left to improvise — not through any fault of the people filling in, but because the statute gives them nothing to work with.

That improvisation has a documented shape: board practice and Robert’s Rules of Order standing in for legislative authority, for a combined three years. Whatever one concludes about the validity of anything done in those periods, the arrangement itself should not have to rest on a procedural manual.

Cabinet has always had the power to fix each vacancy — section 2(3) is a standing duty. What the Code lacks is any answer to the practical questions: by when, and who holds the office in the meantime.

What would fix it

Three small amendments

1. Remove the carve-out in section 2(7). Let the Lieutenant Governor in Council fill a mid-term vacancy in the office of chairperson the same way it fills every other vacancy on the Commission.
2. Add a time limit. Require that a chairperson be designated within a fixed period — sixty or ninety days — of the office becoming vacant.
3. Provide for an acting chairperson. State expressly that the vice chairperson performs the chairperson’s functions during a vacancy, so the arrangement rests on the Code rather than on internal practice.

None of this requires new policy or spending. It is drafting.

Who can do it

The Legislative Assembly, on a bill from the Minister of Justice and Attorney General. The Manitoba Law Reform Commission can also study and recommend amendments of exactly this kind.

Check it yourself

Sources

Every factual claim on this page comes from a public document. None of it depends on trusting this page.

• The Human Rights Code, C.C.S.M. c. H175Sections 2(3), 2(6), 2(7) and 3
• Order in Council 101/2026, 6 May 2026Designation of a chairperson; background paragraphs setting out prior appointments and the 2 January 2025 resignation
• Order in Council 461/2021Prior designation of a chairperson and vice chairperson
• Manitoba Human Rights Commission, response to access request FIPPA-2025/26-07, 29 August 2025Confirms no chairperson between April 2020 and 15 December 2021 and describes the acting arrangement
• Manitoba Human Rights CommissionCurrent membership of the Board of Commissioners

Orders in Council are public records and can be requested from, or searched through, the Government of Manitoba.

The open question

What was decided while the office was empty

The Commission did not pause during either vacancy. Board panels met, complaints were considered and dismissed, and policies were adopted that remain in effect today.

That is not, by itself, an irregularity. Section 3 says the Commission has full authority to act when it has fewer than eight members, so the Code plainly contemplates empty seats.

What the Code does not address is whether anything turns on which seat is empty — the one office it makes mandatory, designates separately, and carves out of its own vacancy provision. No published decision has answered that question.

One court has looked at part of it

In a 2025 judicial review, a judge of the Court of King’s Bench considered a challenge to a Board panel meeting held on 18 November 2020 — inside the first vacancy — and found that the panel was structured in compliance with the Code in force at the time. That challenge was argued on quorum grounds rather than on the designation of the chairperson. The decision was upheld on appeal in 2026.

The narrow point has therefore been decided. The broader one has not been put to a court at all. Anyone reviewing this subject should start from that finding rather than around it.

The limits of this page

What this page does not say