The Supreme Court of Canada will issue a ruling today on the scope of provincial governments’ obligations to fund French-language education systems.
The case revolves around a claim by some parents and a school board in British Columbia. They accuse the provincial government of denying their charter rights by systematically underfunding French-language schools.
Suzana Straus, who lives in Richmond, B.C., said it takes her Grade 9 son an hour to get to a school where he can take French instruction.
Straus said the provincial government’s policies are an obstacle for francophone parents who want their children to be fluently bilingual.
“It means, for many families, they will choose not to send their children to francophone schools,” said Straus, who is president of the Fédération des parents francophones de Colombie-Britannique.
“They will choose to go to the local school and that means assimilation. And that saddens me tremendously.”
The decision by Canada’s highest court is expected to have ripple effects across the country. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)
Mark Power, a lawyer who works in Ottawa and Vancouver, is representing the parents and the school board — the Conseil scolaire francophone de la Colombie-Britannique. He said the case has implications for governments and minority language school boards across the country.
Minority language rights being tested
The parents and the school board allege the province violated minority language educational rights guaranteed under S. 23 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Power said the Constitution guarantees the right to publicly funded primary and secondary French education in Quebec, and publicly funded primary and secondary French language education elsewhere in Canada — where numbers warrant.
Approximately 64,325 people speak French as their primary language in B.C — a 21 per cent increase over 2006, according to 2016 data from the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages.
Lawyer Mark Power: ‘It’s hard to understand exactly how those minority rights can be ignored by the state.’ (Alex Lamic/Radio-Canada)
The parents and school board want the province to change its funding method for French-language education and compensate the board for inadequate funding.
They also want the B.C. government to address infrastructure issues with French-language schools that force them to divide classrooms to make room for all their students.
The parents and school board won a partial victory at the trial level, where a judge ruled some of the province’s procedures for deciding on minority language education funding unjustifiably breached charter rights.
But the judge also concluded that the high cost of building new francophone schools in some parts of B.C. justified infringing upon the charter right — and suggested that in some cases it would simply delay inevitable linguistic assimilation.
“That’s hard to grasp,” Power said. “It’s hard to understand exactly how those minority rights can be ignored by the state and what reason could justify that.”
The parents and school board appealed the decision. That appeal was dismissed by the B.C. Court of Appeal, which allowed a cross-appeal by the province. The appeal court also set aside the damages awarded by the trial judge.
Contacted by CBC News, a B.C. government representative said the government would not comment on the case until after the ruling.
No matter how the highest court rules, it will be too late for some parents and children who already have gone through the education system.
Still, Straus said she hopes it will make a difference for others.
“It would bring us all tremendous joy if they do rule in our favour,” she said.
“It will mainly be for future generations, for our culture to be able to thrive, for future parents not to make these difficult decisions that we had to make.”
OTTAWA – The Federal Court of Appeal has dismissed a bid by the Prince Edward Island Potato Board to overturn a 2021 decision by the federal agriculture minister to declare the entire province as “a place infested with potato wart.”
That order prohibited the export of seed potatoes from the Island to prevent the spread of the soil-borne fungus, which deforms potatoes and makes them impossible to sell.
The board had argued in Federal Court that the decision was unreasonable because there was insufficient evidence to establish that P.E.I. was infested with the fungus.
In April 2023, the Federal Court dismissed the board’s application for a judicial review, saying the order was reasonable because the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said regulatory measures had failed to prevent the transmission of potato wart to unregulated fields.
On Tuesday, the Appeal Court dismissed the board’s appeal, saying the lower court had selected the correct reasonableness standard to review the minister’s order.
As well, it found the lower court was correct in accepting the minister’s view that the province was “infested” because the department had detected potato wart on 35 occasions in P.E.I.’s three counties since 2000.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
FREDERICTON – New Brunswick health officials are urging parents to get their children vaccinated against measles after the number of cases of the disease in a recent outbreak has more than doubled since Friday.
Sean Hatchard, spokesman for the Health Department, says measles cases in the Fredericton and the upper Saint John River Valley area have risen from five on Friday to 12 as of Tuesday morning.
Hatchard says other suspected cases are under investigation, but he did not say how and where the outbreak of the disease began.
He says data from the 2023-24 school year show that about 10 per cent of students were not completely immunized against the disease.
In response to the outbreak, Horizon Health Network is hosting measles vaccine clinics on Wednesday and Friday.
The measles virus is transmitted through the air or by direct contact with nasal or throat secretions of an infected person, and can be more severe in adults and infants.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Donald Trump is refusing to say how he voted on Florida’s abortion measure — and getting testy about it.
The former president was asked twice after casting his ballot in Palm Beach, Florida, on Tuesday about a question that the state’s voters are considering. If approved, it would prevent state lawmakers from passing any law that penalizes, prohibits, delays or restricts abortion until fetal viability — which doctors say is sometime after 21 weeks.
If it’s rejected, the state’s restrictive six-week abortion law would stand.
The first time he was asked, Trump avoided answering. He said instead of the issue that he did “a great job bringing it back to the states.” That was a reference to the former president having appointed three conservative justices to the U.S. Supreme Court who helped overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision in 2022.
Pressed a second time, Trump snapped at a reporter, saying “you should stop talking about it.”
Trump had previously indicated that he would back the measure — but then changed his mind and said he would vote against it.
In August, Trump said he thought Florida’s ban was a mistake, saying on Fox News Channel, “I think six weeks, you need more time.” But then he said, “at the same time, the Democrats are radical” while repeating false claims he has frequently made about late-term abortions.
In addition to Florida, voters in eight other states are deciding whether their state constitutions should guarantee a right to abortion, weighing ballot measures that are expected to spur turnout for a range of crucial races.
Passing certain amendments in Arizona, Missouri, Nebraska and South Dakota likely would lead to undoing bans or restrictions that currently block varying levels of abortion access to more than 7 million women of childbearing age who live in those states.
