Mr. Speaker, Jules Deschênes, who died on May 10, was a distinguished jurist.
He was appointed to the Quebec Court of Appeal in 1972, as chief justice of the Superior Court from 1973 to 1983, and as one of the judges on the special UN tribunal on war crimes in Yugoslavia. But it is primarily for his constitutional rulings that he will be remembered.
In 1976, he upheld the constitutionality of the Bourassa government's Bill 22 establishing French as the official language of Quebec; in 1978, he struck down a section of the Lévesque government's Bill 101, in order to affirm the equality of French and English in the National Assembly and in Quebec's courts; and, in 1982, he struck down another section of Bill 101 limiting access to English language education.
A true federalist, Justice Deschênes understood the importance—