Charlebois v Saint John (City of)

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Charlebois v Saint John (City of)

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Hearing: Argued October 20, 2005
Judgment: Decided December 15, 2005
Full case nameMario Charlebois v. City of Saint John and Association des juristes d’expression française du Nouveau‑Brunswick v. City of Saint John
Citations [2005] 3 S.C.R. 563; 2005 SCC 74 (CanLII)
Prior history Judgement for the City in the Court of Appeal for New Brunswick
Holding
A municipality is not an institution for the purposes of the provincial Official Languages Act.
Court Membership
Chief Justice: Beverley McLachlin
Puisne Justices: Michel Bastarache, Ian Binnie, Louis LeBel, Marie Deschamps, Morris Fish, Rosalie Abella, Louise Charron
Reasons given
Majority Charron, joined by McLachlin, Major, Fish and Abella
Dissent Bastarache, joined by Binnie, LeBel and Deschamps

Charlebois v Saint John (City of) [2005] 3 S.C.R. 563 was a decision by the Supreme Court of Canada on minority language rights in New Brunswick. The Court found no statutory obligation on municipalities for bilingualism in court proceedings.

Supreme Court of Canada highest court of Canada

The Supreme Court of Canada is the highest court of Canada, the final court of appeals in the Canadian justice system. The court grants permission to between 40 and 75 litigants each year to appeal decisions rendered by provincial, territorial and federal appellate courts. Its decisions are the ultimate expression and application of Canadian law and binding upon all lower courts of Canada, except to the extent that they are overridden or otherwise made ineffective by an Act of Parliament or the Act of a provincial legislative assembly pursuant to section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

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 193 sovereign states recognized internationally and an estimated number of roughly 5,000 to 7,000 languages spoken worldwide, it follows that the vast majority of languages are minority languages in every country in which they are spoken. Some minority languages are simultaneously also official languages, including the Irish language in Ireland. Likewise, some national languages are often considered minority languages, insofar as they are the national language of a stateless nation.

New Brunswick province in Canada

New Brunswick is one of four Atlantic provinces on the east coast of Canada. According to the Constitution of Canada, New Brunswick is the only bilingual province. About two thirds of the population declare themselves anglophones and a third francophones. One third of the overall population describe themselves as bilingual. Atypically for Canada, only about half of the population lives in urban areas, mostly in Greater Moncton, Greater Saint John and the capital Fredericton.

Contents

Background

Mario Charlebois challenged the city of Saint John for not using the French language 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.

Saint John, New Brunswick City in New Brunswick, Canada

Saint John is the coastal port city of the Bay of Fundy in the Canadian province of New Brunswick. The port is Canada’s third largest port by tonnage with a cargo base that includes dry and liquid bulk, break bulk, containers, and cruise. In 2016, after more than 40 years of population decline, the city became the second most populous city in the province for the first time, with a population of 67,575 over an area of 315.82 square kilometres (121.94 sq mi). The Saint John metropolitan area covers a land area of 3,362.95 square kilometres (1,298.44 sq mi) across the Caledonia Highlands, with a population of 126,202. After the partitioning of the colony of Nova Scotia in 1784, the new colony of New Brunswick was thought to be named 'New Ireland' with the capital to be in Saint John before being vetoed by Britain's King George III. Saint John is the oldest incorporated city in Canada. During the reign of George III, the municipality was created by royal charter in 1785.

French language Romance language

French 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 spoken Latin in Gaul, and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues d'oïl—languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, which French (Francien) has largely supplanted. French was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the (Germanic) Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to France's past overseas expansion, there are numerous French-based creole languages, most notably Haitian Creole. A French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French.

Both the trial judge and the New Brunswick Court of Appeal 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, and section 16.1 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. 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. [1]

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, in Canada often simply the Charter, is a bill of rights entrenched in the Constitution of Canada. It forms the first part of the Constitution Act, 1982. The Charter guarantees certain political rights to Canadian citizens and civil rights of everyone in Canada from the policies and actions of all areas and levels of the government. It is designed to unify Canadians around a set of principles that embody those rights. The Charter was signed into law by Queen Elizabeth II of Canada on April 17, 1982, along with the rest of the Act.

Decision

Justice Louise Charron 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. [2] 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. She thus turned back to the definition of an institution according to statutes. [3] 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. [4] 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. [5]

Louise Charron, 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.

Obiter dictum is the Latin phrase meaning "by the way", that is, a remark in a judgment that is "said in passing". It is a concept derived from English common law, whereby a judgment comprises only two elements: ratio decidendi and obiter dicta. For the purposes of judicial precedent, ratio decidendi is binding, whereas obiter dicta are persuasive only.

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References

  1. ↑ Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages. "Language Rights 2001–2002 Archived January 3, 2007, at the Wayback Machine .." URL accessed 26 December 2006.
  2. ↑ Para. 14.
  3. ↑ Para. 15.
  4. ↑ Para. 16.
  5. ↑ Para 23-24.
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