Quebec Superior Court

23 Municipalities in court seeking stay against Bill 96

Local Journalism Initiative / / / , ,

By Joel Goldenberg
The Suburban

Lawyers representing 23 municipalities were in Quebec Superior Court Monday and Tuesday, presenting a motion for a stay of various aspects of Quebec’s language law Bill 96 until the challenge can be heard on the merits.

The case, first announced at a press conference in Côte St. Luc in June 2023, is being brought by municipalities that are officially bilingual because they have more than 50 percent mother tongue anglophone populations, and those which have opted in, declaring to the government they want to remain officially bilingual as they are below the 50 percent mother tongue threshold but were officially bilingual according to previous rules.

The municipalities challenging the law, represented by the Grey Casgrain law firm, are Baie d’Urfé, Beaconfield, Blanc-Sablon, Bonne-Ésperance, Chichester, Côte St. Luc, Dollard des Ormeaux, Dorval, Havelock, Hope Town, Kazabazua, Kirkland, L’Isle Aux Allumettes, Montreal West, Mulgrave and Derry, New Carlisle, Pointe Claire, Senneville, Sheenboro, Shigawake, Stanbridge East, Wentworth and Westmount.

A statement from Côte St. Luc and the other municipalities points out that the legal action “covers five areas, including contracts and communications, the obligation to adopt resolution to maintain bilingual status, illegal searches and seizures, government grants, and the obligation to discipline employees.”

More specifically, the provisions the cities want declared invalid and inoperative are the prohibition for contracts to be written in a language other than French, “even if both parties agree,”; allowing OQLF inspectors to inspect and seize, at any time without notice, any documents, equipment and computers from any municipal body; that cities have to declare in resolutions that they want to maintain their bilingual status if the English mother tongue population is below 50 percent; that the language minister or another designated minister can withhold provincial government grants to a city if they don’t comply with any provision of the law; and that a city has to punish any employee who does not comply with Bill 96.”

The municipalities say that Bill 96 “compromises the concerned municipalities’ bilingual status, which is intrinsically part of their cultural identity, but the proposed provisions also extend far beyond language rights and undermine constitutionally protected and inalienable rights that belong to all Quebec citizens.”

CSL Mayor Mitchell Brownstein said late last week that “municipalities with bilingual status have been waiting for this hearing to ask the Superior Court to suspend the articles of the law that cause harm to our municipalities and that will impose a change that we are confident will eventually be overturned when the case is heard on its merits later on.

“For instance, our future capital projects are at risk because of the power given to the Minister of the French Language to withhold funding to municipalities granted by other ministries of the government. Municipalities need to be able to plan for the future without the threat of withheld funding.”

Dale Roberts-Keats, Mayor of Bonne-Espérance which has a population of 695, says Bill 96 “has created much confusion with regards to the obligation to use French for all contracts. It’s absurd that for our municipality where 99 percent of the population has English as their preferred language, we can’t produce contracts with suppliers in our community in English.” n

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Court limits on Bill 96 a “significant win” for EMSB

Local Journalism Initiative / / / , , , ,

By Joel Ceausu
The Suburban

The Quebec Superior Court has provided a partial stay of provisions of Bill 96 and the Charter of the French Language following the EMSB’s challenge to the application of amendments brought into force in June 2023, without any consultation of the English-language community.

EMSB Chair Joe Ortona called the ruling a “significant win,” noting that the Superior Court stayed parts of the law that would require English school boards to communicate exclusively in French when corresponding with key institutions of the English-speaking community, such as the Quebec English School Boards Association. Many critics and even some proponents of a more robust French-language charter found it unreasonable that English educational bodies were forced to communicate with other English educational bodies in French.

While Ortona reiterated the board’s commitment to teaching French, so students “can live and work in Quebec, it is important to emphasize that we are an English-language school board and a key institution of the English-speaking community.”

In the ruling, the court concluded that the term “school service centres” in legislation applies to English-language school boards, despite the fact that Bill 40 does not apply to English-language school boards, which are also not school service centres. The EMSB’s council of commissioners will decide whether to appeal this part of the ruling.

This ruling also benefits other English language boards and the Quebec English School Boards Association.

As for Bill 96 provisions that were not stayed by the Court, the status quo will generally be maintained until there is a final judgment on the law’s constitutionality, Ortona adding that the EMSB can continue to use English exclusively in many situations, “which is good news.” The board challenged the constitutionality of some provisions the day Bill 96 gained assent. The EMSB’s constitutional challenge has been joined with court challenges of other parties and is progressing through the court system and expected to be a lengthy process, he noted. “The EMSB applied for a stay to avoid suffering irreparable harm while the EMSB waits for a final decision on the constitutional challenge.” n

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