Good morning. My name is Geneviève Lévesque, and I am the president of Regroupement étudiant de common law en français, or RÉCLEF, a group that endeavours to promote the interests of law students and improve the French-language tools available to those in the legal profession.
As part of its national mandate, RÉCLEF sent the Minister of Justice a letter in 2010. In response, RÉCLEF received a letter signed by a ministry official, on behalf of the minister.
The caricature contains an exact excerpt from that letter, and it reads as follows:
Bilingualism in Canada is a federal construct — it is not a legal or constitutional requirement.
That comment would suggest that the employee either overstepped his authority and did not convey the minister's position or was authorized to sign the letter without first consulting the minister.
That thinking does not hold up, however, because a few days later, the minister sent Association des juristes d'expression française de l'Alberta, or AJEFA, a letter in which she said, and I quote:
Alberta maintains that bilingualism in Canada is a federal construct — it is not constitutionally required in the provinces or territories.
How can a justice minister claim that the provinces and territories have no obligations when it comes to the country's linguistic duality?
Alberta has laws setting out legal obligations as far as linguistic duality is concerned. The Languages Act, for example, authorizes the use of both languages before the province's courts. The Jury Act sets out language requirements for those who serve on a jury in a criminal or civil case. Therefore, a unilingual francophone cannot sit on the jury in an English-language proceeding, and vice versa.