A civil liberties organization is appealing a Federal Court decision that held that the Supreme Court of Canada is not required to translate some 6,000 judgments issued between 1877 and 1969.
In a ruling handed down this summer, Justice Denise LeBlanc held that the nation’s highest court did not breach the federal Official Languages Act (OLA) when it posted on its website its untranslated pre-1970 judgments in their original languages.
Justice LeBlanc also held in Droits collectifs Québec v. Office of the Registrar of the Supreme Court of Canada, 2026 FC 706 that the statute does not oblige the top court to translate thousands of historical judgments into both official languages because the rulings are neither “services to” nor “communications with” the public within the meaning of the OLA, and are therefore not subject to the translation obligation set out in the general provisions of Part IV of the OLA.
Since 2021, the civil liberties group Droits collectifs Québec has lodged two successful complaints before Canada’s Commissioner of Official Languages. Raymond Théberge, the then-commissioner, determined their complaints were founded and that the online publishing of the untranslated judgments was a communication with the public by a federal institution under the OLA.
Théberge summoned the nation’s highest court to translate all of its rulings dating before 1970 to comply with its obligations under The Official Languages Act. But the Court registrar’s office has not entirely paid heed, prompting Droits collectifs Québec to unsuccessfully request a remedy before the Federal Court under OLA s. 77.
“French speakers need to use tools such as the judgements handed down by the Supreme Court of Canada in their day-to-day lives,” Étienne-Alexis Boucher, the executive director of Droits collectifs Québec, told the French-language newspaper Le Devoir. “So why require these judgements to be translated? It is so that ordinary people, and the community of French-speaking legal professionals, can enjoy the same benefits and have access to the same tools as their English-speaking colleagues in a country that describes itself as bilingual.”
But Chief Justice Richard Wagner said the court does not intend to translate the more than 6,000 judgments rendered between 1877 and 1970.
“It’s not bad faith, it’s a question of means, (and) it’s also a question of reasonableness,” he said, noting it would take about a hundred translators 10 years and between $10 million and $20 million to complete the job. “We don’t have that money.”
Justice Wagner said that translating pre-1970 decisions would be of little utility and would only “please those who are lovers of legal cultural heritage.”
That stance perplexes Boucher. He told me that there are several judgments, such as Saumur et al. v. Procureur général du Québec and Roncarelli v. Duplessis, that were handed down before 1969 and are still seminal today. Boucher believes that the situation discriminates against French-speaking Canadians and Quebecers whose “right to benefit” from a French translation of pre-1970 SCC rulings is not respected by an institution that should be “exemplary” and respect the rule of law.