Mr. Speaker, believe it or not, I still had about six minutes.
Let us look at what the Supreme Court actually wants. It speaks for itself. What I was just reading was a global assessment of the child’s educational pathway depending on the specific facts of each case. It is in paragraph 29 of the Supreme Court decision. Just imagine.
In my introductory remarks, I mentioned that I had been a commissioner on the Commission d'appel sur l'accès à l'enseignement in Quebec. Just imagine what this will mean. They say in the decision that the specific facts of each child and the specific facts of each school will have to be assessed in order to determine whether it was a bridging school. Different terms are used to describe these schools.
If people want to know what this is really all about, we should remember that the Supreme Court grudgingly admitted that the French language was a good idea in Quebec because it is part of Canada. However, the framers—the Supreme Court’s code word for Jean Chrétien and Pierre Trudeau—decided in 1982 that sub-section 23(2) of the Canadian Charter would take precedence over the Charter of the French Language. This is reflected throughout the decision.
Let us look at the decision, word by word. Look at this in paragraph 30: “Section 73 CFL—”. If the members want a telling detail that shows just how the Supreme Court really thinks, look at “CFL”. That is how they write it. It means the Charter of the French Language. The courts in Quebec have already said that this is a quasi-constitutional statute. But here it just has initials, as if it were the Canadian Football League. They say: “The [...] CFL is to implement the constitutional guarantees [...]”. So the CFL, the Charter of the French Language, is supposed to implement. It is as if the Charter were some kind of gofer, doing someone else's bidding. This is about language. Quebec is the only province in Canada with a francophone majority that needs to protect French. Look at the rest. This is from the same sentence. It says, “[...] implement the constitutional guarantees provided for [...]”. So there are guarantees. Where? In the Canadian Charter, written out in full. What a fine demonstration of basic prejudice.
The CFL implements while the Charter confers rights. Lets us look a little further. Paragraph 31 says: “As I mentioned above, paras. 2 and 3 of s. 73 CFL provide that instruction received [in a UPS or pursuant to a special authorization under s. 82, 85 or 85.1 CFL] must be disregarded”. It can therefore not be given any consideration whatsoever in either qualitative or quantitative terms. The specific facts of each case have to be considered. Every school has to be studied, one by one, on a case by case basis, to determine whether it was a bridge school or not. They even go so far as to analyze the schools’ advertising. What a mess.
According to paragraph 32, “In the protection afforded by the Canadian Charter, no distinction is drawn as regards the type of instruction received by the child, as to whether the educational institution is public or private.” What matters instead is “the child’s overall situation and [...] an analysis of the child’s educational pathway that is both subjective and objective”. Just imagine. It is each specific child, on a case by case basis, qualitatively and quantitatively, and finally considered both subjectively and objectively. That is what has to be done in each case thanks to the Supreme Court of Canada. In the court’s view, “this interpretation is compatible with the primary objective of s. 23(2) [...]” of the Canadian Charter.
There is more. Moving along to paragraph 36: “The ‘bridging’ schools appear in some instances to be institutions created for the sole purpose of artificially qualifying children for admission to the publicly funded English language school system”. A bit further in the same paragraph, it says: “However, it is necessary to review the situation of each institution, as well as the nature of its clientele and the conduct of individual clients. As delicate as this task may be, this is the only approach that will make it possible to comply with the [Charter] [...] That is what Quebec is expected to do.
Look in paragraph 38 at the order of importance: “Bill 104 [the bill that is attacked in this decision] had two principal objectives. The first was to resolve the problem of bridging schools [...]. The second, more general, objective was to protect and promote the French language [...]”. It seems to me that protecting the French language was the first objective. For them, it was secondary and more general. That really shows their state of mind.
Finally, look at what happens in paragraph 44. It is really something. The judge says that six months or a year in a bridging school may not be enough to purchase this right. What they are saying is that if people have the $15,000 to $20,000 a year it costs to send their child to an unsubsidized private school, it is not enough for them to buy just one year.
The court is providing a roadmap here. People have to buy two years and then all their children can go to an English school.
Far from giving real meaning to the recognition of Quebec as a nation, this decision would create a breach that is impossible to fill in the efforts that have been going on for decades to reach a linguistic settlement.
For those of us who have always worked to assure Quebec’s place in Canada, this judgment is an unfortunate relic from a bygone era and a potent weapon in the hands of those who think it is time to leave.
The House should support our motion to get the facts straight and enable Quebec to do what it has always wanted, that is, ensure that newcomers who choose to go to Quebec, even though they could go elsewhere, learn first and foremost the common language of Quebeckers, which is French.