No. The quorum is the panel. The Supreme Court of Canada currently has eight bilingual judges. Therefore, if the case is being argued in French, in order to have a panel constituted of an odd number of judges, in all likelihood there would be a panel of seven judges that would hear the case. Therefore, it's somewhat like the point raised by Mr. LeBlanc: if there is a reduced panel, do we have a two-tiered justice system?
On September 30th, 2009. See this statement in context.