''Arsenault-Cameron v Prince Edward Island'', 0001 S.C.R. 3, 2000 SCC 1, is a landmark

Supreme Court of Canada The Supreme Court of Canada (SCC; french: Cour suprême du Canada, CSC) is the Supreme court, highest court in the Court system of Canada, judicial system of Canada. It comprises List of Justices of the Supreme Court of Canada, nine justices, wh ...

decision on

minority language A minority language is a language spoken by a minority of the population of a territory. Such people are termed linguistic minorities or language minorities. With a total number of 196 sovereign states recognized internationally (as of 2019) ...

rights. The Court found that the numbers of Francophone children in Summerside,

Prince Edward Island Prince Edward Island (PEI; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is the smallest province in terms of land area and population, but the most densely populated. The island has several nicknames: "Garden of the Gulf", ...

warranted

French-language French ( or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the Latin spoken in Gaul, and more specifically in No ...

education in Summerside, under section 23 of the ''

Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms The ''Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms'' (french: Charte canadienne des droits et libertés), often simply referred to as the ''Charter'' in Canada, is a bill of rights entrenched in the Constitution of Canada, forming the first part ...

'', and the province was constitutionally obligated to create a French language school.

Background

A number of Francophone families living in Summerside made a request to the French Language Board to build a French-language school in the community rather than bus the children to the closest French school 57 minutes away. The Board made a proposal to the Minister which was rejected. The family applied for a declaration against the province to build a school in Summerside. At trial the declaration was granted but was overturned on appeal. In the decision of ''Arsenault-Cameron v. Prince Edward Island'',

999 999 or triple nine most often refers to: * 999 (emergency telephone number), a telephone number for the emergency services in several countries * 999 (number), an integer * AD 999, a year * 999 BC, a year Books * ''999'' (anthology) or ''999: T ...

3 S.C.R. 851, prior to the language rights hearing, the counsel for the government sought to have

Bastarache Bastarache () is a French surname of Basque origin. It was formed as a patronym of ''Basterreche'', which itself is a topographic name for someone who lived in a house by a boundary, or on the edge of a settlement or the corner of a street. It is ul ...

recuse himself for

reasonable apprehension of bias In Canadian law, a reasonable apprehension of bias is a legal standard for disqualifying judges and administrative decision-makers for bias Bias is a disproportionate weight ''in favor of'' or ''against'' an idea or thing, usually in a way that ...

due to his history of championing the French language. In an application to Bastarache, he held that he was not biased to hear the case, and so did not recuse himself.

Opinion of the Court

Major and Bastarache, writing for a unanimous court, applied a

purposive interpretation The purposive approach (sometimes referred to as purposivism, purposive construction, purposive interpretation, or the modern principle in construction) is an approach to statutory and constitutional interpretation under which common law courts ...

to section 23 of the ''Charter''. He found that the purpose of the right is to redress past injustices and provide "an official language minority with equal access to high quality education in its own language in circumstances where community development will be enhanced."

External links

* Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms case law Supreme Court of Canada cases 2000 in Canadian case law Linguistic rights Minority rights case law French-language education in Canada Medium of instruction Minority languages Summerside, Prince Edward Island Education in Prince Edward Island {{canada-law-stub