Bilingual cities and towns in Quebec join forces to mount legal challenge to Bill 96

Twenty-three municipalities in Quebec have joined together to ask the courts to suspend parts of Quebec’s new language law, which they describe as abusive, while they contest it.

All of the cities and towns taking part in the challenge, including Côte Saint-Luc, Beaconsfield, Dorval, Kirkland, Montreal West and Westmount have bilingual status.

The Act respecting French, the official and common language of Quebec, amends several pieces of Quebec legislation, including the Charter of the French Language, making it more difficult to receive services in English.

The mayors say they are concerned about communications, illegal searches and seizures, government grants and the obligation, set out in the law, to discipline public employees who break the rules by working in English.

The challenge was filed in Superior Court.

Dale Roberts-Keats, mayor of Bonne-Espérance — a municipality on the Lower North Shore about 60 kilometers from the Labrador border with fewer than 700 residents — says the new law is unreasonable.

“It’s absurd that for our municipality, where 99 per cent of the population has English as their language, we can’t produce contracts with suppliers in our municipality in English,” said Roberts-Keats.

“In our office, we’re all English, so how are we going to make them understand a contract that’s only in French? It’s just ludicrous,” she said.

“We have been fighting for the rights of our English population for decades, and it hasn’t been easy at all and Bill 96 will only exacerbate that situation,” said Roberts-Keats.

Alex Bottausci, mayor of Dollard-des-Ormeaux, a city of 48,200 residents in Montreal’s West Island, took aim at Section 117 of the law, which he says allows the province to withhold subsidies to municipalities that don’t follow Bill 96 rules.

“When you lose that grant money, you’re talking about roads, infrastructure, construction,” which also benefits francophone and allophone residents, Bottausci said.

A man wearing a suit stands beside a map of Quebec.
Alex Bottausci, mayor of Dollard-des-Ormeaux, said withholding subsidies under the new language law will punish francophones in his city. (Charles Contant/CBC)

He added that by linking subsidies for municipalities to French protection laws, Quebec is “creating problems where there are no problems.”

‘Abusive’ powers for language inspectors: Côte Saint-Luc major

Côte Saint-Luc’s major underlined that the law gave inspectors from the Office québécois de la langue francaise (OQLF) — the province’s language watch dog — heightened powers that contradict the Act respecting Access to Documents held by public bodies and the protection of personal information.

Section 117 allows OQLF inspectors to conduct searches and seizures without warrant and without notice.

Under the law, inspectors are empowered to look at the information on public workers’ smartphones and other intellectual property, which is “more than is allowed to the police in a criminal investigation,” Brownstein said.

“These inspections are unlimited, uncontrolled and therefore unreasonable and abusive,” he said.

Brownstein invited all bilingual cities to clearly indicate that their respective city halls would provide English services “without question” and urged the government to use “positive strategies” to protect French, such as improving access to education, rather than adopting laws that are “punitive” and conflict with democracy.”

“It’s simple to create a piece of legislation at the top, but then when it gets to the lower levels [of government]all of a sudden that’s when there is a disconnect.

Legal challenge ‘creative,’ a human rights lawyer says

Human rights lawyer Pearl Eliadis called the municipalities’ legal approach “more creative” because it doesn’t mainly rely on challenging the province’s pre-emptive use of the notwithstanding clause of the Canadian Constitution.

A woman wearing glasses, a white blazer and a red scarf speaks.
Human rights lawyer Pear Eliadis said the challenge could reach the United Nations’ Human Rights Committee. (McGill University)

“They’re looking at the way at which the drafting is done and the definition of who is an English-speaker and who isn’t, the way in which English-speaking municipalities are going to function,” she said.

“The big question here is whether or not a Superior Court, an appellate court or even the Supreme Court of Canada will build some safeguards around the use of the not withstanding clause.”

She said she believes the case will eventually reach the Supreme Court and potentially the United Nations’ Human Rights Committee.

A spokesperson for Eric Girard, the minister responsible for relations with English-speaking Quebecers, declined to provide a statement, saying the minister would comment Friday on the court challenge.