Thank you, Mr. Chair, and ladies and gentlemen members of the committee.
It is as individuals that Geneviève and I have come to meet with the members of the committee, to provide a few examples to illustrate the situation of language rights in Alberta in connection with the Criminal Code.
I will begin by referring to a 1927 quote from the newspaper Le Droit. The quote can be found in the notes which have just been given to you. Today I am only raising the issue with regard to Alberta, in connection with this quote. There has been so much evolution in our country since 1927 that there is no doubt that this quote no longer applies to the vast majority of the country, but I do want to raise the following question. In 2014, is the French language relegated to the status of an excluded and banned foreign language? If so, what is the rationale behind the persecution? Is it still based on legality and the principle that might makes right?
The notes we have given you are an overview of a thirty-page brief which will also be provided to the members of the committee and will allow us to reply to that question.
We have chosen to use what I learned in my classical studies, which is that it is always easier to correct a situation by using humour. In Latin, we say castigat ridendo mores, which means “he corrects customs by using humour”. We have chosen to give you six cartoons published over the past few years in Alberta to describe the situation. These cartoons were published in Alberta newspapers such as the Edmonton Le Franco, the Calgary Le Chinook, and occasionally in the Toronto L'Express to describe unacceptable situations, primarily as regards criminal law.
Unfortunately, in Alberta, the Department of Justice uses its jurisdiction over the administration of justice to prevent or limit the exercise of language rights, even in criminal law matters. Sometimes this is imposed on judges, or on the person subject to trial and the lawyers, which leads people to abandon the exercise of minority language rights. Other times, this is done in a more subtle way. The instruments and work tools of the administration of justice are not available in French, or in a bilingual format.
Our brief will provide a large number of examples that may be useful in drafting the committee's report for Parliament.
Last November, the Minister of Justice wrote to the clerk of the committee in reply to a letter from the chair, Mike Wallace. The French translation of his letter shows that he wrote to Mr. Jean-François Pagé. The official English version signed by the minister, which you received, shows that, rather, he wrote to “Jean-François Page”. At the Department of Justice in Alberta, the keyboards do not have accents. Our brief provides several examples of trial transcripts in French. You will be surprised to see that the accused Marc-André Lafleur has become Marc-Andre Lafleur. I obtained permission from my clients to quote them and to provide all of these texts.
But it goes even further than that. It happens that certain documents have to be signed at the court and are in French. The fact that the name no longer has an accent has serious consequences. I once had a client whose name was Calvé. His name no longer had an accent in the texts, be it in the recognizance to appear or in any other document he had to sign during his appearance. The documents said “Mr. Calve”. It may take some time before you understand whether you are the person being called.
Sometimes, the tactics used by the Department of Justice are less subtle. The instruction manual on how to prepare legal transcripts in Alberta makes no mention of hearings in French, not even at the criminal level.
In the document we will be providing to the committee, you will find the transcript of the criminal hearing in the matter of R. v. Castonguay, held in Calgary. Bear in mind that it didn't take place in the 20th century but, in fact, just two years ago.
Ms. Castonguay's case was the first surprise. Judge Anne Brown agreed with my arguments, which were presented in French, and rendered her decision orally in French. Since there was no written decision, I asked for the transcript, and it did not contain what I had argued in French or what the judge had said in French. We had purportedly used a foreign language. Still today, in Alberta, in 2014, that is what those who prepare proceeding transcripts are instructed to write.
If it's not in English then you put as an explanation a choice of two things: other language spoken or foreign language spoken.
The notation “other language spoken” or “foreign language spoken” appears in the transcript 15 times. The judge's decision does not appear in the transcript. Clearly, then, that represents not only a lack of respect for the independence of the judiciary, but also a denial of an individual's rights. The transcript is paramount in cases where people want to appeal the decision. The transcript has to be filed.
Back to the Castonguay case, because the Crown was not happy that Judge Brown had ruled in our favour, it appealed the decision, in English. The Crown, however, withdrew the appeal as soon as it realized that it would be a perfect opportunity for me to show the superior court what a miscarriage of justice the transcript represented. The words of the person appearing before the court, her legal counsel and even the judge had not been transcribed in the other language of the Alberta courts.
In 2009-10, I argued for four days for a clarification of the Alberta statute whereby citizens can express themselves in English or French before the courts. It wasn't a matter of federal rights but, rather, those set out in Alberta's legislation. In Alberta, citizens are indeed allowed to speak English or French before the three levels of courts. But not until this past September had there ever been a regulation allowing that right to be exercised, so much so that those charged with administering justice, the public servants and lawyers alike, had no idea how to speak French. The barriers were so numerous that French was seldom spoken.
In 2004 and 2009, I established a cause to have that right clarified. It took four days because the Crown argued that my clients and I had the right to speak French, but not the right to be understood in French. That illustrated that the Province of Alberta did not recognize the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court, which had overruled the previous authority from New Brunswick whereby Acadians had the right to speak French in the 20th century, but not the right to be understood in French.
In criminal law, more specifically in R. v. Beaulac, in 1999, the Supreme Court ruled that, from then on, language rights had to be given a broad and generous interpretation by the courts in all cases, civil and criminal. But that didn't happen in Alberta, which continued to follow the previous case law. It's almost as though the Alberta Ministry of Justice felt it could use Supreme Court jurisprudence in cases where it saw fit to do so and not in others.
I will now turn things over to Geneviève, who will explain one of the caricatures. I know she's pressed for time because she has a criminal law class at 1 o'clock. She's a second year law student at the University of Ottawa and she definitely does not want to be late for class, even though she would have a good excuse today.