R v Mercure

Last updated
R v Mercure
Supreme Court of Canada 2.jpg
Hearing: November 26, 27, 1986
Judgment: February 25, 1988
Full case nameAndré Mercure v Attorney General for Saskatchewan
Citations [1988] 1 SCR 234
Docket No. 19688
Prior historyJudgment for the Crown in the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal
RulingAppeal allowed
Holding
French language rights guaranteed by s 110 of The North-West Territories Act continued to apply in Saskatchewan
Court Membership
Chief Justice: Brian Dickson
Puisne Justices: Jean Beetz, Willard Estey, William McIntyre, Julien Chouinard, Antonio Lamer, Bertha Wilson, Gerald Le Dain, Gérard La Forest
Reasons given
MajorityLa Forest J, joined by Dickson CJC, Beetz, Lamer, Wilson and Le Dain JJ
DissentEstey J, joined by McIntyre J
Chouinard J took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
Laws Applied
The North-West Territories Act, RSC 1886, c 50, s 110
Saskatchewan Act , SC 1905, c 42, ss 14, 16

R v Mercure was a ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1988, dealing with language rights in the province of Saskatchewan. [1]

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.

Saskatchewan Province of Canada

Saskatchewan is a prairie and boreal province in western Canada, the only province without a natural border. It has an area of 651,900 square kilometres (251,700 sq mi), nearly 10 percent of which is fresh water, composed mostly of rivers, reservoirs, and the province's 100,000 lakes.

The appellant demanded the right to a statutory provision in Saskatchewan governing a speeding ticket be expressed in French as well as the right to have a trial conducted in French. English and French are both considered official languages in Canada.

Appeal process for reviewing and changing court decisions

In law, an appeal is the process in which cases are reviewed, where parties request a formal change to an official decision. Appeals function both as a process for error correction as well as a process of clarifying and interpreting law. Although appellate courts have existed for thousands of years, common law countries did not incorporate an affirmative right to appeal into their jurisprudence until the 19th century.

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.

English language West Germanic language

English is a West Germanic language that was first spoken in early medieval England and eventually became a global lingua franca. It is named after the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes that migrated to the area of Great Britain that later took their name, as England. Both names derive from Anglia, a peninsula in the Baltic Sea. The language is closely related to Frisian and Low Saxon, and its vocabulary has been significantly influenced by other Germanic languages, particularly Norse, and to a greater extent by Latin and French.

Lower courts had denied him this right, so he sought appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. However, the appellant died before the Supreme Court could hear his appeal. The Court exercised its discretion to hear the appeal notwithstanding its mootness because the case not only raised an important legal issue but satisfied the other criteria for the hearing of a moot appeal, including the continued existence of a proper adversarial context.

The Supreme Court ruled that language rights enjoyed an almost constitutional status and could only be repealed by a 'clear legislative pronouncement'. The Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan subsequently repealed official bilingualism.

Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan

The Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan is one of two components of the Legislature of Saskatchewan, the other being the Queen of Canada in Right of Saskatchewan,. The legislature has been unicameral since its establishment; there has never been a provincial upper house.

Related Research Articles

Manitoba Schools Question

The Manitoba Schools Question(French: La question des écoles du Manitoba) was a political crisis in the Canadian Province of Manitoba that occurred late in the 19th century, involving publicly funded separate schools for Roman Catholics and Protestants. The crisis eventually spread to the national level, becoming one of the key issues in the federal election of 1896 and resulted in the defeat of the Conservative government, which had been in power for most of the previous thirty years. Because of the close linkage at that time between religion and language, the Schools Question raised the deeper question whether French would survive as a language or a culture in Western Canada.

Court system of Canada an article about the court system of Canada

The court system of Canada forms the judicial branch of government, formally known as "The Queen on the Bench", which interprets the law and is made up of many courts differing in levels of legal superiority and separated by jurisdiction. Some of the courts are federal in nature, while others are provincial or territorial.

The legal dispute over Quebec's language policy began soon after the enactment of Bill 101, establishing the Charter of the French Language, by the National Assembly of Quebec in 1977.

<i>Vriend v Alberta</i>

Vriend v Alberta [1998] 1 S.C.R. 493 is an important Supreme Court of Canada case that determined that a legislative omission can be the subject of a Charter violation. The case involved a dismissal of a teacher because of his sexual orientation and was an issue of great controversy during that period.

Léo Piquette was elected to the Alberta Legislative Assembly in the 1986 Alberta election. He was a member of the Alberta New Democratic Party for the district of Athabasca-Lac La Biche.

<i>Doucet-Boudreau v Nova Scotia (Minister of Education)</i>

Doucet-Boudreau v Nova Scotia [2003] 3 S.C.R. 3, 2003 SCC 62, was a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada which followed the Nova Scotia Supreme Court's finding that a delay in building French language schools in Nova Scotia violated the claimants' minority language educational rights under section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This finding led to an important debate regarding the scope of section 24(1) of the Charter, which provides for remedies for those whose rights are infringed, and the applicability of the common law doctrine of functus officio. While the Supreme Court of Canada split on what constitutes an appropriate usage of section 24(1), the majority favoured a section 24(1) with broad, flexible capabilities.

<i>R v Drybones</i>

R v Drybones, [1970] S.C.R. 282, is a landmark 6-3 Supreme Court of Canada decision holding that the Canadian Bill of Rights "empowered the courts to strike down federal legislation which offended its dictates." Accordingly, the Supreme Court of Canada held that section 94(b) of the Indian Act is inoperative because it violates section 1(b) of the Canadian Bill of Rights.

<i>R v Askov</i> Canadian court case

R v Askov, [1990] 2 S.C.R. 1199, is a 1990 appeal heard before the Supreme Court of Canada which established the criteria and standards by which Canadian courts judge whether an accused's right under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Section 11(b) "to be tried within a reasonable time" has been infringed.

<i>Canada (AG) v Lavell</i>

Canada (AG) v Lavell, [1974] S.C.R. 1349, was a landmark 5–4 Supreme Court of Canada decision holding that Section 12(1)(b) of the Indian Act did not violate the respondents' right to "equality before the law" under Section 1 (b) of the Canadian Bill of Rights. The two respondents, Lavell and Bédard, had alleged that the impugned section was discriminatory under the Canadian Bill of Rights by virtue of the fact that it deprived Indian women of their status for marrying a non-Indian, but not Indian men.

<i>Canada (House of Commons) v Vaid</i>

Canada v Vaid, [2005] 1 S.C.R. 667, 2005 SCC 30 is the leading decision of the Supreme Court of Canada on parliamentary privilege. The Court developed a test for determining when a claim of parliamentary privilege can protect a legislative body or its members from legal scrutiny. Besides the parties to the case, the Court heard from the following interveners: the Attorney General of Canada, Senator Serge Joyal, Senator Mobina Jaffer, the Canadian Association of Professional Employees, the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada, and the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.

<i>Borowski v Canada (AG)</i>

Borowski v Canada (AG), [1989] 1 S.C.R. 342 is the leading Supreme Court of Canada decision on mootness of an appealed legal issue. The Court declined to decide whether the fetus had a right to life under sections 7 and 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Had they found in favour of Borowski, stricter laws against abortion in Canada would have to have been enacted. Thus, along with the later Supreme Court case Tremblay v Daigle (1989), Borowski "closed off litigation opportunities by [the] pro-life".

<i>Arsenault-Cameron v Prince Edward Island</i>

Arsenault-Cameron v Prince Edward Island, [2000] 1 S.C.R. 3, 2000 SCC 1, is a landmark Supreme Court of Canada decision on minority language rights. The Court found that the numbers of Francophone children in Summerside, Prince Edward Island warranted French-language education in Summerside, under section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the province was constitutionally obligated to create a French language school.

<i>Charlebois v Saint John (City of)</i>

Charlebois v Saint John [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.

<i>R v Beaulac</i>

R v Beaulac [1999] 1 S.C.R. 768 is a decision by the Supreme Court of Canada on language rights. Notably, the majority adopted a liberal and purposive interpretation of language rights in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, overturning conservative case law such as Société des Acadiens v. Association of Parents (1986). As the majority wrote, "To the extent that Société des Acadiens du Nouveau-Brunswick... stands for a restrictive interpretation of language rights, it is to be rejected."

Thoburn v Sunderland City Council is a UK constitutional and administrative law case, concerning the interaction of EU law and an Act of Parliament. It is important for its recognition of the supremacy of EU law and the basis for that recognition. Though the earlier Factortame had also referred to Parliament's voluntary acceptance of the supremacy of EU law, Thoburn put less stress on the jurisprudence of the ECJ and more on the domestic acceptance of such supremacy; Lord Justice Laws suggested there was a hierarchy of "constitutional statutes" that Parliament could only expressly repeal, and so were immune from implied repeal.

Southern Pacific Terminal Co. v. ICC, 219 U.S. 498 (1911), was a United States Supreme Court decision that held that while normally, in order for the court to hear a case, there must still be a controversy outstanding, when the issue was such that it would be of short duration, and would most likely become moot before appellate review could take place, and that the issue was likely to reoccur, then the court could hear the issue.

Because the country contains two major language groups and numerous other linguistic minorities, in Canada official languages policy has always been an important and high-profile area of public policy.

<i>Paul v British Columbia (Forest Appeals Commission)</i>

Paul v British Columbia , 2003 SCC 55, is a leading Supreme Court of Canada decision in administrative law and aboriginal law. The case stands for the proposition that a provincial administrative actor granted the power to determine questions of law may adjudicate matters within federal legislative competence, including s. 35 aboriginal rights matters.

The Preamble to the Constitution Act, 1867 provides:

References

  1. ↑ R v Mercure, [1988] 1 SCR 234.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.