The Quebec Court of Appeal confirmed that certain provisions of a provincial law that abolished school boards unjustifiably infringe the rights guaranteed to Quebec’s minority language groups by the Canadian Charter, a ruling deemed by the English community as a sweeping win.
In a “very-well written, well-reasoned judgment” that examined the nature and scope of the rights conferred by section 23 of the Charter, which guarantees minority language educational rights, the Appeal Court mostly upheld a lower court ruling that found sections of Bill 40 are inoperative to Quebec’s English-language school boards.
The Quebec government announced in late May that it will seek leave to appeal before the Supreme Court of Canada.
“It’s a perfectly sound, well-reasoned judgment from a legal standpoint, but I’m not surprised by the ruling,” remarked Érik Labelle Eastaugh, Dean, Faculty of law at the Université de Moncton and former head of the International Observatory on Language Rights. “Not surprising, but it’s an important judgment, given that it deals with certain issues that had never been squarely addressed by the courts until now.”
Stéphane Beaulac, professor of constitutional law at the Université de Montréal, specializing in language law, and counsel at Dentons Canada in Montreal, too believes that the Appeal Court’s “well-reasoned” ruling “clears up questions” while “giving ample context” over the issues raised by s. 23 of the Charter. But Beaulac asserts that the Quebec Appeal Court may have too broadly defined the scope of the English-language minority community in Quebec covered by s. 23 of the Charter.