Joel Ceausu – The Suburban LJI Reporter
That letter you got from your kid’s English-speaking principal at their English school about next week’s carnival may soon have to be written in French. When a director general of an English board writes to another about issues affecting their boards, those would need to be in French too. Vraiment.
These are just a few of the more puzzling, and widely viewed as ludicrous and unhelpful, provisions of the government’s Bill 96 reform of the Charter of the French language. The English Montreal School Board is now pushing back, announcing Wednesday that it is seeking a stay of provisions of Bill 96 and the Charter requiring use of French in the majority of internal written communications, as well as internal documents, and written communications between English school boards, among others.
“We are taking action now,” said chair Joe Ortona, “because in recent correspondence with the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF), the situations in which the EMSB is permitted to use English only in internal communications have been interpreted very narrowly.”
Ortona says the EMSB offers rich French programming in its schools and remains committed to ensuring students have strong French language abilities, but “it is important to emphasize that we are an English school board and a key institution of the English-speaking community.”
The legal challenge is being launched because the restrictive view of the OQLF is interfering with the pursuit of the board’s mission and mandate, says Ortona. “It places an unnecessary burden on our staff, diverting their focus from educational priorities and students. Furthermore, while the province is facing a teacher shortage, the government’s approach shrinks our application pool.”
The EMSB is also challenging the application of 20-year-old amendments to the Charter that the government brought into force this summer without consulting the community, effectively forcing English boards to communicate exclusively in French when writing with key community institutions such as the Quebec English School Boards Association. “Requiring exclusive use of French with these institutions is simply shocking,” said Ortona, adding “these provisions should be suspended, as they would cause irreparable harm to the English-speaking community.”
The EMSB brought an application to challenge the constitutionality of numerous provisions of Bill 96 and the Charter of the French Language in June 2022, and was joined with the court challenges of other parties and progressing through the court system. “It is expected to be a lengthy process,” said Ortona. “Unless we secure a stay, the EMSB will suffer irreparable harm during the period of time that we are waiting for a decision on its constitutional challenge.” n