Thank you.
Good day, Ms. Richard. I'm from the province of Quebec. I'm a lawyer and, like yourself, I'm still practising, but less often, given that I am a member of the House Commons.
I'll give you a brief overview of my background. Mr. Ménard was my Minister of Justice in the Parti Québécois government. That party enacted Bill 101 in 1976 or 1977. The act requires the use of French everywhere, especially in the universities. I studied at the primary school level in French. At the time, that wasn't so bad. I went to high school only in French, and my law degree at Laval University was in French only, because Bill 101 had been enacted. So, today I'm a unilingual francophone and functionally bilingual.
Except that when I go before the courts, at least in Quebec, I will get a judge based on the language requested by the lawyer or the client. Several of them are unilingual anglophones or unilingual francophones, whereas other are bilingual. I come from Quebec City, which is mainly unilingual. My former Minister of Justice, Mr. Bédard—who knows Mr. Ménard very well—comes from the Lac-Saint-Jean area, where all proceedings are in French. Mr. Bédard is an excellent lawyer. He and other lawyers have won cases.
I would be struck from the list of potential judges because during my entire career, I never practised in the other language. There are 23,000 lawyers in Quebec and approximately 18,000 of them could not go to the Supreme Court without an interpreter. I accept the need to be bilingual, but that would be without interpreters. There are lawyers here from Alberta and New Brunswick and even my former Minister of Justice, Mr. Ménard. If we were to argue before the Supreme Court, we may have some difficulty, without an interpreter, in other words we would not be eligible. Does the fact of being unilingual make us incompetent?
The bill states clearly "without the assistance of an interpreter“. I'd like you to tell me whether I would be eligible.