A few days after the

Supreme Court of Canada The Supreme Court of Canada (SCC; , ) 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 between 40 and 75 litigants eac ...

delivered its ruling in the 1988 case of Ford v. Quebec (Attorney General), a decision which approved multilingual commercial expression, the Parti libéral du Québec (PLQ) government of premier

Robert Bourassa Robert Bourassa (; July 14, 1933 – October 2, 1996) was a Canadian lawyer and politician who served as the 22nd premier of Quebec from 1970 to 1976 and from 1985 to 1994. A member of the Liberal Party of Quebec, he served a total of just ...

amended

Bill 101 The ''Charter of the French Language'' (, ), also known as Bill 101 (, ), is a law in the Canadian province of Quebec defining French, the language of the majority of the population, as the official language of the provincial government. It is th ...

with Bill 178. This latter Act maintained French as the only language on outdoor "public signs, posters and commercial advertising" and within shopping centres and the public transit system. The only exceptions were "foreign-language" signs indoors, subject to approval by the Office de la langue française, and advertisements carried in non-French media, such as the

Montreal Gazette ''The Gazette'', also known as the ''Montreal Gazette'', is a Canadian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper which is owned by Postmedia Network. It is published in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is the only English-language daily newspape ...

. To override the Supreme Court's ruling, Bourassa invoked the notwithstanding clause of the Quebec and

Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms The ''Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms'' (), often simply referred to as the ''Charter'' in Canada, is a bill of rights entrenched in the Constitution of Canada, forming the first part of the '' Constitution Act, 1982''. The ''Char ...

. In June 1993, the PLQ changed the

Charter of the French Language The ''Charter of the French Language'' (, ), also known as Bill 101 (, ), is a law in the Canadian province of Quebec defining French, the language of the majority of the population, as the official language of the provincial government. It is th ...

again with Bill 86, which allowed bilingual outdoor signs provided French was predominant. The Supreme Court's decision was jeered by Quebec nationalists and applauded by Anglo rights activists. Since then, the bilingualism debate has periodically reared its head, from debates over the amount of English spoken in downtown stores to the Italian menu flash-in-the-pan called Pastagate.

References

Quebec language policy Quebec provincial legislation Canadian language legislation 1988 in Canadian law 1988 in Quebec {{Canada-law-stub