Mr. Chair, members of the standing committee, I would like to introduce myself. I'm Marcus Tabachnick, president of the Quebec English School Boards Association. With me today is David Birnbaum, the director general of the Quebec English School Boards Association.
Our association thanks you for this opportunity to present its views in support of the reinstatement of the court challenges program of Canada. We have felt it important to add our continuing voice to those of numerous institutions, community organizations, and academic, political, and opinion leaders, who are calling for the reversal of a very ill-conceived government decision to cancel the funding of the court challenges program.
Our association appeared on this subject last December before the House of Commons committee on Canadian heritage. Our association was one of the more than 100 that lodged complaints with Canada's Commissioner of Official Languages on the failure of this government to respect its legal obligation to consult minority language communities, among others, before undertaking the drastic and damaging steps it took.
The Quebec English School Boards Association is the public voice of nine anglophone school boards that serve some 75,000 students at the primary and secondary level, as well as those enrolled in adult education and professional training throughout Quebec. Our members' who are school board trustees elected by universal suffrage, represent the only order of government that is exclusively accountable to members of a linguistic minority community living in Quebec.
It is on behalf of these voters, and particularly their children, that the Quebec English School Boards Association is here today to call for the reinstatement of the Court Challenges Program. We find it entirely reasonable for the government to heed our demand.
Our leadership is deeply committed to strengthening its future through partnerships and collaboration with francophone Quebecers through agreements and innovative projects with neighbouring French school boards, municipalities, and communities. The QESBA is proud and determined to contribute to the vitality and development of English-speaking Quebec. That pride and determination instructs us to build bridges to our majority community. It also requires that we do all that we can to safeguard our constitutional and legislative rights and freedoms as a minority in Canada.
The Government of Canada, of course, has obligations regarding the vitality and development of its linguistic minorities as well. Our association maintains and insists that the reinstatement of the court challenges program of Canada is among those obligations. It is an essential tool if the individual and collective rights and freedoms of the members of both of Canada's linguistic minority communities and the vitality and development of those communities are to be realized as enshrined in part VII of the Official Languages Act, not to mention Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
As Commissioner of Official Languages Graham Fraser noted in his preliminary report on the government's 2006 expenditure review, the court challenges program's significant contribution over the years to the advancement of language rights in this country is unquestionable. Just as certain are the ongoing evolution of language rights and the need of minority language communities for reasonable access to the judicial process to ensure the protection and promotion of their interests.
The commissioner's preliminary report clearly restates the vital role of the program to linguistic minorities and equality groups across Canada, and then goes on to validate our association's complaint and that of so many others that the cancellation of the program was not, as required, the subject of due process. Mr. Fraser's preliminary finding subsequently confirmed the negative impact that will ensue from the cancellation of the court challenges program. The elimination of financing for the program will have an even more serious impact on the respect and implementation of language rights, since, on the one hand, many legal issues have not yet been resolved, and on the other hand, the crystallization of language rights depends on positive actions by governments--governments that are not always prepared to meet this obligation.
This eminently sound reasoning was echoed in May 2006 by the very same federal government that then deemed to cancel the program only months later. I quote:
The Court Challenges Program (CCP), funded by the Government of Canada, provides funding for test cases of national significance in order to clarify the rights of official language minority communities and the equality rights of historically disadvantaged groups. An evaluation of the CCP in 2003 found that it has been successful in supporting important court cases that have a direct impact on the implementation of rights and freedoms covered by the Program.
The quote continues:
The Program has also contributed to strengthening both language and equality-seeking groups' networks. The Program has been extended to March 31, 2009.
The above deposition was made by the Government of Canada before the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, as reported in the commissioner's preliminary report.
The QESBA particularly addresses itself to the members of the government side on this committee when it asks for some explanation, because no satisfactory one has been forthcoming in the months that have passed since the cancellation of the program for this sudden and final decision. The absence of such an explanation has inevitably led to suggestions that the cancellation was motivated by ideological intransigence, partisan considerations, or simple disdain for due process. We await to be enlightened by a more constructive or defensible answer, if such a response exists.
At times, English-speaking Quebeckers have detected an obvious trend within parliamentary circles and elsewhere, of forgetting that Canada is made up of two linguistic minority communities: anglophone and francophone. It must be acknowledged that these two communities will have a high price to pay if the decision to cancel the Court Challenges Program is not overturned.
The anglophone community and the school board network that serves it have adapted well to a Quebec that is changing. Despite this, successive Quebec governments, similar to their provincial counterparts in the rest of the country, have not always been generous nor sensitive to the needs of linguistic minority voters.
Consequently, recourse for us to the court challenges program is as pertinent as it is to francophones in the rest of Canada and to equality groups across the country.
Our current provincial minister of Canadian intergovernmental affairs, ironically, and perhaps inadvertently, made this case for us recently. He deposited a motion before Quebec's National Assembly supporting the annual report of the official languages commissioner, which dealt so prominently with the court challenges program. It read, in part, as follows, and this is our translation:
That the National Assembly reiterate the importance that the French language be defended and promoted as an official language of Canada and demand that the federal government clearly affirm its intention to follow up on the last report of the Commissioner of Official Languages and this, in the interests of the future of the French language in the rest of Canada.
Laudable sentiments, to be sure. And the motion carried unanimously.
It continued for another four paragraphs without a single mention of Quebec's own minority language community, Quebec's own founding voice of linguistic duality; that is to say, it concluded with not a word of reference to Quebec's English-speaking community. There is indeed a continued imperative for vigilance on minority language matters in Quebec, as well as in the rest of the country.
The nine member school boards of our association have the constitutional right to control and manage schools serving the English-speaking community of Quebec. School boards exercise that right, at least in part, by virtue of decisions rendered in landmark cases made possible by the court challenges program of Canada. Perhaps the most significant of those cases, the Mahé case in Alberta, would not likely have found its way to the Supreme Court without support from the court challenges program.
Key interventions from English-speaking community organizations in Quebec were funded in that case and in others directly affecting education rights. The right of students to attend minority language schools is also a question that the court challenges program was created to help answer.
In Quebec, access is limited by the charter of the French language but nevertheless protected within those limits under section 23 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. If individuals are to test the extent of those constitutional protections against the formidable resources of government, they must have the right to do so. The court challenges program is an essential, meaningful, and, lest anyone forget, financially reasonable way to ensure that right.
With all due respect, the number of committee hearings that have taken place and the number of reports that have been drafted are sufficient enough to merit a government promise to fully reinstate the Court Challenges Program as soon as possible.
With the greatest of respect, enough committee hearings have now been held. Enough reports have been drafted. It's time to call the question and to answer it with a government promise to renew, without delay, full funding of the court challenges program.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.