Barely weeks after the Supreme Court of Canada affirmed the right to a trial in one’s official language of choice, a Court of Quebec judge ruled that a provision of the French language charter that calls for the “immediate and simultaneous” filing of English rulings into French cannot apply to criminal proceedings in the province.
The decision, decried by some constitutional law experts and the Quebec government as judicial interventionism, will likely serve as a blueprint for criminal lawyers as it outlines a host of “unfair and highly problematic” issues that prevent a criminal court judge from rendering his verdict in a timely manner and fails to ensure the equal treatment of French and English accused because English-speaking accused could face delays because of translation delays, according to legal pundits.
“I hope the decision serves as a wake-up call,” said Dylan Jones, a Montreal criminal lawyer with Boro Frigon Gordon Jones. “Many of my clients will be affected by this new provision, but it’s good to see that the judiciary is addressing some of these issues. There’s a lot in our justice system that could be improved upon, but instead, we’re creating bureaucratic hurdles that are just going to make it more complicated for people to get their decisions heard. I’m happy he took the initiative.”
There is no motive for delaying the rendering of a judgment, particularly in criminal cases, asserts Montreal human rights lawyer Julius Grey. “Given the distress and consequences of criminal law, the accused should be given priority, not language politics,” said Grey.
But constitutional law expert Stéphane Beaulac believes the ruling “reeks” of judicial interventionism. It is an “obvious example of where a judge has taken it upon himself to proclaim himself, no more and no less, the great defender of the language rights of Quebec’s English-speaking minority,” remarked Beaulac, a law professor at the Université de Montréal and counsel at Dentons. “There is an absolute right to have your trial conducted in the language of your choice, but nowhere does it say there is an absolute right to receive your judgment in English at the same time. There’s something of a reasoning gap.”
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