From tiny Hope Town village in the Gaspé (population 335) to sprawling West Island suburb Dollard-des-Ormeaux (population 48,000). From remote Blanc-Sablon on the North Shore to tony Westmount in the middle of Montreal.
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“We have people in our community who are gay and straight, French-speaking and English-speaking, Christian, Jewish and Muslim,” said Côte-St-Luc Mayor Mitchell Brownstein.
“The only way to provide municipal service in a community like ours is through respect and tolerance of differences. Bill 96 — like Bill 21 before it — is flawed and we look forward to making our case in court.”
Civil rights lawyer Julius Grey, representing the municipalities, said that “when Bill 101 was passed, the government said, correctly, that bilingual status was one of the main ways of protecting and respecting the minority.
“If it is one of the main ways, then it’s got to have meaning. It’s got to deliver. When you read Bill 96, you see that they’ve tried to cut away” at the status.
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He said the Quebec government tells the anglophone community: “‘Look, we’ve given you all these rights,’ but when they’re applying those rights, they’re cutting them, they’re narrowing them, interpreting them in restrictive ways.”
Within the next few weeks, the municipalities are to ask a judge to temporarily suspend parts of Bill 96 while they wait for their case to wind its way through the courts, a process that could take years and ultimately end at the Supreme Court.
Their case — outlined in a 32-page motion filed in Quebec Superior Court Tuesday — focuses mainly on:
Searches and seizures
Some sections of Bill 96 “authorize uncontrolled and unreasonable searches and seizures (by the Office québécois de la langue française) in the offices of municipalities, where confidential documents are kept, as well as privileged information,” the lawsuit notes.
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This contravenes “unreasonable search and seizure” guarantees in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.
“It’s more than is allowed to police in a criminal investigation,” Brownstein said, noting no warrant is required.
“They can search our computers, our smartphones, they can look at our intellectual property. … It could be based on a disgruntled employee’s decision to make a complaint. These inspections are unlimited, uncontrolled and therefore unreasonable and abusive.”
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Bilingual status
Bill 96 introduced new rules regarding municipal bilingual status, which allows some cities to use French and English in written and oral communications as well as on signs.
Municipalities can now lose the status if less than half of the population has English as a mother tongue.
The lawsuit argues mother tongue is too restrictive a standard. “This metric undercounts the true number of people who speak English at home and identify as English-speaking.”
It notes many seniors in these municipalities have not had the chance to learn French and some immigrants “are more fluent in English than French, especially when reading technical information such as tax bills,” while other Quebecers “do not consider their mother tongue to be English, although they speak English fluently when compared to French.”
They add: “By using the more restrictive definition, Bill 96 limits the ability for (municipalities) to service (their) English-speaking residents who may not have English as their mother tongue in an arbitrary, unjust, unfair and discriminatory way.”
Under Bill 96, once census figures indicate a municipality shouldn’t have bilingual status, the OQLF sends a notice. The municipality then has 120 days to pass a resolution, allowing it to keep its status. The lawsuit contends this is unreasonable and could result in cities mistakenly losing their status. Once the status is lost, it cannot be regained.
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Contracts and communications
The municipalities argue their bilingual status should be exempt from provisions requiring the use of French for both contracts and communications.
The lawsuit contends this creates unreasonable situations for municipalities such as Bonne-Espérance. The North Shore community’s population (695) is 99 per cent English. The town would have to sign contracts in French with a local garbage collection company owned by a local anglophone, for example, the municipalities say.
“It would certainly be absurd to create municipalities with bilingual status under (Bill 101) without giving any effect to their existence,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit says the measure breaches the freedom-of-expression rights outlined in the Canadian Constitution.
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In requiring French-only contracts, Quebec pre-emptively invoked the Charter’s notwithstanding clause. Municipalities call this a “misuse” of the clause, which allows governments to override some fundamental rights.
The use of the clause is already subject to a court challenge related to Bill 21, Quebec’s secularism law.
Government grants
Under Bill 96, Quebec’s minister of the French language can withhold a subsidy from a municipality deemed to have failed to comply with Bill 101.
The lawsuit doesn’t contest that the province has the discretion to give grants.
However, the municipalities are seeking “interpretation and clarification to avoid some negative consequences” related to their “possible default.” They also want the court to bar Quebec from withholding federal grants normally passed on to municipalities.
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Beaconsfield Mayor Georges Bourelle offered a hypothetical situation in which a city is approved for provincial funding for a new park or arena but the minister vetoes the grant because the municipality has been put on a “blacklist.”
Bourelle said the minister could do that for arbitrary reasons — for example, the municipality has too many job openings requiring English, it has not filed OQLF reports quickly enough, or “someone has inundated the OQLF with invented complaints.”
Disciplining employees
Under Bill 96, municipalities must implement a complaints procedure regarding the French language, file an annual report, and “establish disciplinary measures to prevent and punish any breaches committed by their staff,” the lawsuit says.
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“In a municipality with bilingual status, not every employee must be bilingual. Further, services can be provided in English. … It makes no sense to discipline somebody for doing what the law permits, and there should be no offence for an English-speaking employee to get immediate assistance by a bilingual one if French service is required.”
Côte-St-Luc city councillor Steven Erdelyi said Bill 96 has created some “absurd” situations. Some anglophone employees of the city of Montreal now won’t speak in English to anglophone counterparts in Côte-St-Luc for fear of being disciplined, he said.
Bilingual signs
The lawsuit asks the court to clarify rules regarding signs in bilingual municipalities.
It’s an issue in urban agglomerations. For example, the lawsuit states, both the Montreal police department and the Société de transport de Montréal have refused to post bilingual signs in Côte-St-Luc, even though that city has bilingual status.
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“It is necessary for the court to clarify and declare that all municipalities with bilingual status are entitled to post bilingual signs on their territory with regard to all local or shared services.”
The municipalities
The municipalities behind the lawsuit are scattered across Quebec — in Montreal, the North Shore, Outaouais, Gaspé, Laurentians and Eastern Townships.
These are the towns and cities involved:
- Baie-D’Urfé
- Beaconsfield
- Blanc-Sablon
- Bonne-Espérance
- Chichester
- Côte-St-Luc
- Dollard-des-Ormeaux
- Dorval
- Township of Havelock
- Hope Town
- Kazabazua
- Kirkland
- L’Isle-aux-Allumettes
- Montreal West
- Mulgrave-et-Derry
- New Carlisle
- Pointe-Claire
- Senneville
- Sheenboro
- Shigawake
- Stanbridge East
- Township of Wentworth
- Westmount
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