Official Languages committee  The decision of the Federal Court of Appeal will serve as a laboratory for Parliament. It provides a set of ideas and principles that Parliament can test, as it did with the obligation to consult and linguistic clauses, for example. In a way, the Federal Court of Appeal has hande

Official Languages committee  Part VII is useful for francophone Quebec too. If that part had been drafted better and applied more firmly by the courts, the Netflix issue would have been resolved differently. On a careful reading of section 41 in part VII, even…

Official Languages committee  The decision shines tremendous light on the major problems with the existing Official Languages Act. The Federal Court of Appeal's decision shows just how far Ottawa's lack of legislative action causes problems for official languages, both English and French. If you go to bookm

Official Languages committee  We need an act. We don't need regulations. We do need regulations. The government promised us regulations in 1988, when your predecessors passed the present Official Languages Act. However, there's only one regulation, and it was revised only once to take the Internet into consi

Official Languages committee  The government must ensure that the Treasury Board is required to act, that it intervenes far upstream, long before problems arise and without regard to the work done by the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages, long before a complaint is litigated in Federal Court.

Official Languages committee  The best way to protect French using the Official Languages Act, whether in Ottawa, Vancouver, New Brunswick, Quebec City, Montreal or Lévis, is to make a central agency such as the Treasury Board responsible for administering the act. Right now, no one is responsible. No one pu

Official Languages committee  With regard to consultation, the Federal Court of Appeal found, at page 67 of bookmark A, that consultation is required, that federal institutions must be aware of the needs of the francophone minority and that this is a requirement that stems from part VII of the Official Langua

Official Languages committee  Good afternoon. My name is Mark Power, and I'm a lawyer. I am here today with my colleague Darius Bossé, who comes from Madawaska. I grew up in Toronto. My name is English, but my first language learned and still understood is French. I'm more comfortable in French. My mother c