The Court Challenges Program OTTAWA - Eighteen months after it scrapped the court challenges program, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government restored elements of it Thursday - but the only people who will be able to get funding to defend their charter rights before the courts are Canada’s linguistic minorities. Under the new Program to Support Linguistic Rights, the government will spend $1.5 million a year to help anglophones in Quebec and francophones outside that province defend their linguistic rights under the Canadian charter. The program puts more emphasis on mediation that the previous program did but still provides for funding court challenges in cases where groups believe their charter rights have been violated. Like the previous program, the new version does not fund challenges of provincial laws unless the plaintiff can show it violates the federal charter of rights. The news of the new program was coupled with the government’s announcement of a renewed official languages action plan that will see Ottawa spend $1.1 billion over five years. While much of the plan is a continuation of the programs contained in the last action plan launched by the Liberals, the plan unveiled Thursday includes funding for arts and culture. The two announcements come only a week after the federal government reached an out-of-court settlement with the Federation des communautes francophone et acadienne du Canada, bringing an end to their legal battle to restore the $3-million-a-year program cut by the Harper government in the fall of 2006. Some, like Official Languages Commissioner Graham Fraser and several groups representing linguistic minorities, were glad to see the program restored for language rights cases. The Gazette 2008 How must the Courts interpret constitutional language rights? The aforementioned constitutional sections all have unique characteristics and meanings. Consequently, their analysis can be lengthy and time consuming. However, we would like to point out that the Supreme Court has recently pronounced itself on the general rules of interpretation that are to be applied in language rights matters. The Supreme Court had this to say about the general interpretation of language rights at paragraph 25 in R.. v. Victor Beaulac [1999] S.C.J. No.25: "Language rights must in all cases be interpreted purposively, in a manner consistent with the preservation and development of official language communities in Canada;". This decision reverses some previous case law where the Supreme Court had stated that because language rights were based on political compromises they had to be interpreted restrictively. This decision also confirms the social and collective nature of language rights and that henceforth these rights must be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and development of official language communities in Canada. --Court Challenges Program Web Site
Posted on: Sun, 16 Jun 2013 15:24:05 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015