''Charlebois v Saint John (City of)'' 0053 S.C.R. 563 was a decision by the

Supreme Court of Canada The Supreme Court of Canada (SCC; french: Cour suprême du Canada, CSC) is the highest court in the judicial system of Canada. It comprises nine justices, whose decisions are the ultimate application of Canadian law, and grants permission to ...

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) and ...

rights in

New Brunswick New Brunswick (french: Nouveau-Brunswick, , locally ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. It is the only province with both English an ...

. The Court found no statutory obligation on municipalities for bilingualism in court proceedings.

Background

Mario Charlebois challenged the city of Saint John for not using the

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 ...

in court proceedings. He maintained that the failure to provide bilingual services was a violation of Section 22 of the provincial Official Languages Act, which states that bilingual services should be provided by all institutions of the provincial government—which raised the question of whether a municipality is, legally speaking, a provincial institution. Both the trial judge and the

New Brunswick Court of Appeal The Court of Appeal of New Brunswick (french: Cour d'appel du Nouveau-Brunswick) (frequently referred to as New Brunswick Court of Appeal or NBCA) is the appellate court in the province of New Brunswick. There are five Justices, one Chief Justice, ...

decided municipalities are not institutions. The Court of Appeal and Supreme Court found the definition of an "institution" is an institution which under legislation has a function related to government. This definition excludes municipalities, which are corporations, incorporated under provincial law. Charlebois also challenged English-only municipal laws and won his case before the Court of Appeal with arguments regarding section 18,

section 16 Section, Sectioning or Sectioned may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media * Section (music), a complete, but not independent, musical idea * Section (typography), a subdivision, especially of a chapter, in books and documents ** Section sig ...

, and section 16.1 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 o ...

. The Court of Appeal decision is also known as ''Charlebois v Mowat et ville de Moncton''. The government of New Brunswick said it would not appeal this decision and instead provided the affected municipalities with the funds needed to provide French-language versions of their municipal statutes.

Decision

Justice

Louise Charron Louise Charron, (born March 2, 1951) is a Canadian jurist. She was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada in October, 2004, and is the first native-born Franco-Ontarian Supreme Court judge. (This distinction has sometimes been attributed to Lo ...

emphasized in her opinion that the majority would not consider constitutional issues but rather just the statutes and whether the municipality should have used French in the courts, and she found against Charlebois. Charron noted that in terms of constitutional law and section 16 of the Charter, municipalities were deemed institutions by the Court of Appeal. However, she decided that the Court of Appeal's decision related more to section 18 of the Charter and the commentary on section 16 and institutions was thus

obiter dictum ''Obiter dictum'' (usually used in the plural, ''obiter dicta'') is a Latin phrase meaning "other things said",''Black's Law Dictionary'', p. 967 (5th ed. 1979). that is, a remark in a legal opinion that is "said in passing" by any judge or arbit ...

. She thus turned back to the definition of an institution according to statutes. Looking at the Official Languages Act, Charron found that a municipality is considered to be an entity separate from institutions and each has different language responsibilities. The responsibilities for municipalities are more limited than those held by other institutions, and while the defendant in quasi-criminal law will have the choice as to what language is used, this is not necessarily true of civil proceedings. While the Charter of Rights could encourage a liberal reading of the law if the law is uncertain, Charron found that in this case the law was clear.Para 23-24.

References

External links

* {{lexum-scc, 2005, 74 Bilingualism in Canada Supreme Court of Canada cases 2005 in Canadian case law Language case law