At the time that was decided, there had just been a nasty object lesson in the pitfalls of US-style federalism.
Word.
Because the Constitution says so. From the Canadian Constitution, section 91:
Simply put, it would take a constitutional amendment to change the above.
So, are you worried about turning into troglodytes or something other than ‘people’?
What makes you so special that you should exist 50 years from now as some identifiable group? Hint: being obstinate by denying reality and protecting a dying language doesn’t make one ‘special’.
Of course not, there’s probably a few in NewBrunswick and maybe one in Ottawa. But besides that most of them are going to be from Québec. It’s just the nature of demographics and geography in North American the minority language surrounded by an overwhelming majority language group is going to be naturally more bilingual than the other. Hence most of the Supreme Court will be filled with judges from Québec. I love Québec but I don’t want the Supreme Court making decisions from soley a Québec point of view. It has to be diversified.
You’re from the Ottawa area so am I. So you’re probably already have an idea of the language demographics of federal public service already in the area. Which is basically 75% francophone and 25% anglophone in any given department. There’s a movement afoot that all positions are being reclassified as bilingual essential even when it isn’t warranted they’re nice about it though they don’t fire the dinosaurs outright they just wait until they retire. Part two of the quiet revoloution I suppose.
I don’t know why messengers delivering boxes have to be bilingual but they apparently they have to be. I don’t know why all 10 analyst positions assigned with dealing with specific federal regional centres across Canada have to be bilingual but they are. Then you have some departments that you would think that have never left the 70’s it’s still full of oisti anglais. Like Health Canada when it comes to scientists. But then their mandate is to make sure that new brand of armor all coming in isn’t going to kill you, your family or your pets. So they’re allowed to hire the best regardless of language, and yet that doesn’t seem to tear apart the social fabric of our country.
I am suprised though regarding the AG appointment that he chose a unilingual person. But apparently he’s the best. He already has a working knowledge of French and has promised to learn it. Maybe that was his intention credentials, education, experience first. Language second. How it should be. He has one of the Official Languages should be good enough. I wouldn’t care if he only spoke French if he was the best.
This wasn’t Trudeau’s original intention though when he introduced Official Bilingualism but this is what it’s turned into. It’s swung a little to far to the left.
Again this brings me back to the point of the PS being one of the largest employers in our country why are we working so hard to limit ourselves to 15% of the employment pool ? What’s the benifit ?
Of course not, there’s probably a few in NewBrunswick and maybe one in Ottawa. But besides that most of them are going to be from Québec.
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This is not corred, Ibanez. It is currently the law that in criminal matters, anyone charged with an offence under the Criminal Code has the right to be tried in their mother tongue, either English or French. Since the Code applies across Canada, that means that the trial courts across Canada have to have the institutional capacity to try cases in both English and French, which means there are some fully bilingual judges on every trial court. Since the accused has a right to appeal in the language of choice, that also means that the appellate courts also have to have some institutional capacity to hear appeals in either language.
So, each province has judges who are bilingual. But the numbers who meet that requirement will vary greatly from province to province.
Eastern Ontario and New Brunswick then. Ok. Understood.
As the above discussion has pointed out, the right to be heard in either English or French does not mean that the judge must be fluent in that particular language – thus translation services.
In both Ontario and Quebec courts, a party has a right to use either English or French.
In both Ontario and Quebec courts, there is no requirement that all judges be bilingual.
In Ontario courts, a party has a right to be heard by a bilingual judge.
Please show me where an Anglophone has the right to be heard by an English speaking judge in Quebec court. [Crickets . . . ]
If you consider this to be a problem (which is how I interpret this sentence), why is the opposite not true?
If you consider it inappropriate that an anglophone in Québec not be tried by an English speaking judge, why then, is it appropriate for a francophone in Alberta (for example) to not be tried by a French speaking judge?
Why the double standard? If it upsets you that anglophones might have their rights limited in a francophone environment, why doesn’t the inverse also upset you?
It seems to me that the Québec courts are much more accommodating than those in other provinces. I’ve only skimmed this report - and it’s a few years old and focuses on Montreal - but I wonder if the same level of bilingual service could be had in other major cities in the country?
The solution CANNOT BE to “simply accept that stuff gets done in English”. It’s not an acceptable option, so the solution MUST be bilingualism. Francophones aren’t going away. I’m 100% against the separation of Québec, but I damn well won’t accept “reality” as Uzi so rudely put it and treat French as a dying language. It’s one of my two languages, in my country, and it’s an insult to suggest that I should just let one of them erode away.
grrrr these threads just piss me off so much.
As it stands, at the Supreme Court of Canada, a party can use either English or French, but there is no requirement that the judge be fluent in the language used by the party (thus translation is used). There have been, are and will be judges on the SCC who are not fluent in French. There are three judicial seats on the SCC that are reserved for judges from Quebec (usually from from the Quebec region rather than the Montreal region, but that is another issue).
Hypnagogic Jerk, would you be willing to trade the seats reserved for Quebec on the SCC for a requirement that all SCC judges be fluently bilingual?
Me too.
Hey, look at that. The Habs have won three in a row! 
I just duck and let the shrapnel fly by overhead. 
Ha, yeah. AND they finally get to fucking play again. On a back to back. Both as away games (their last 3 games were in 4 nights). The NHL Schedulemaker pisses me off as much as these threads.
I should really learn to do that.
I just learned that a friend of mine has miscarried. She was about 6 months into her pregnancy. That turns my anger to sorrow.
The universe sucks.
Seems to me that the necessity of bilingual judges ought to depend on the percentange of population in the particular area likely to require their services.
Thus, in places like Montreal, which has a large English speaking minority, or certain bits of Ontario, which has a large French-speaking minority, it makes sense to have them … but not in parts of Quebec without a significant English speaking minority, or parts of the RoC that lack a significant French-speaking minority.
Take for example Montreal vs. Toronto or Vancouver. In the latter two, there are more Chinese speakers than French speakers.
Nobody said it was a problem. They’re challenging you to explain how there is an inequality at play.
If in fact a person should only be tried before a judge fluent in their native tongue, then that is a problem anywhere in Canada bilingual judges are available, not just outside Quebec. If it is not a problem at all, then it is a problem nowhere.
Muffin’s point is simply that Quebec is not unusually accomodating in this regard, by Canadian standards. There simply isn’t any basis for complaint here.
I’m not going to get into this discussion with regards to any of the myriad other languages that exist in this country. The official languages of this country are English and French and the discussion should revolve around that fact - which, IMHO, is NOT alterable - without throwing in a bunch of red herring.
In a one-judge town/system, if there is a monolingual defendant or witness (or whoever) of either official language involved in a trial, and that trial is in an area where the other official language is predominant, I feel that the judge should be able to understand the defendant/witness in order to consider a trial to be fair. Hence, the judge should be bilingual. In a case where there are multiple judges on a panel, I feel that some proportion - perhaps half - should be bilingual, for the same reason.
Would you feel comfortable defending yourself in front of a judge that does not understand you, within your own country where your language is an official one? Would you simply want to trust that a translator would get every nuance, subtlety and idiomatic term you use, and not inadvertently bias your statements? No? Then why should it be ok for someone who speaks the other language to have to accept that?
If the point of the judicial system is justice (perhaps a topic for another thread :)) then it is only just that someone whose language is recognized as official and legal be allowed to be served by the judiciary in that same language.
It is not an insult to unilingual people. It is not discrimination. If you want a given job, you need to be qualified, and when that job is the judgment of others, you need to be able to hear them fairly in order to judge them fairly.
It’s not that hard to become bilingual. [smartass]Children can do it[/smartass]. I’ve known people to pick up a second language to a high level of fluency as adults. Don’t bitch and whine that you’re being discriminated against because you don’t want to learn a skill you need for a job you want. Go out and learn the skill.
Note, before someone points out some “OMG, but Québec does this too!!!” I happen to believe what I’ve just written for both Québec and Canada, so any such hypothetical responders can STFU 
It is. By law, it must be available in all courts across the country. If the original judge cannot understand the official language spoken by an accused (that is, either English or French), then the matter will be adjourned until a judge who can understand the accused can be brought in. If for some reason, no such judge is available locally who can fill that role, then the matter will be moved to a court where such a judge is available.
As was said above, this is a right of the accused. See ss. 530-534 of the Criminal Code.
The mistake you are making is assuming that neither judges nor accused can be scheduled around language issues.
The point is not to “bitch and whine” about discrimination - for myself, I’d rather doing almost anything other than be a judge! - but rather, the costs to the system of excluding legal talent for a requirement that is, in most of the country, fairly worthless, and simplicity itself to accomodate.
After all, which is easier and least costly?
(1) In those rare cases where an accused or litigant can only speak one of thge official languages in an area of the country where the vast majority of the population speaks the other (say, Toronto), assigning that person’s case to the docket of a bilingual judge - a matter of checking off a tab in an application form and having a clerk make a scheduling note; or
(2) forcing literally every judge in the country to be bilingual, and refusing application of even the most brilliant legal minds if they are not?
I don’t consider it to be a problem. I do consider it to by hyprocritical on the part of Quebec for demanding that all judges higher up the appeal chain from Quebec be bilingual, while not requiring that all Quebec judges be bilingual, particularly given that trial level courts hear the verbal testimony of witnesses whereas appeal courts usually do not. Of course what actually takes place is that all provinces do the best they can to find the best judges possible, and then distribute the judges so as to make it possible for parties to use English or French.
I do not care one way or the other whether an anglophone is tried by a franophone, or a francophone is tried by an anglophone, provided that proper translation is provided.
If one had better legal ability than the other, then I would want the one with better legal ability appointed. If two judicial candidates are essentially the same in all aspects with the exception that one is unilingual and the other is bilingual, I would want the bilingual one appointed. If, as is the case, there are many applicants who have various backgrounds and talents and who are of superior legal ability, I would want the judiciary overall to be representative of the populace of its jurisdiction, which given the tremendous variety of cultures and languages in Canada, means that not all judges would have the same attributes – thus some would be bilingual, and some would not.
From Stats Can regarding mother tonques in Alberta:
Total 3,256,355
English only 2,990,805
French only 2,200
English and French 222,885
Neither English nor French 40,470
According to the Federal Department of Justice, “In criminal law, there seem to be no more than one or two trials in French (or bilingual trials) per year in Alberta.”
It does not make any sense to me to preclude over 90% of Alberta’s population from being judges on linguistic grounds for the benefit of a little more than a couple of thousand people and only one or two trials per year.
That means that the mother tongue for most of Alberta’s bench and bar will be English, and that relatively few of them will speak French. If bilingualism is required to sit on the Supreme Court of Canada, it will stand in the way of Alberta being represented by its best and brightest, for linguistic ability in a province in which French is otherwise of little use would trump legal ability.
Hmm, I see your point. But doesn’t this then trickle down to other issues in our society, like bilingual education? If we do not insist that people in the legal profession - and let’s limit the discussion to this profession/industry, for the sake of simplicity, ok? - learn both languages, is there a sufficient pool of “naturally/culturally” bilingual people to ensure that each jurisdiction have an available bilingual judge? I really don’t know the answer to that.
I’ve seen a lot of anglophones in 'the ROC" complain about they or their kids even having to learn any French at all in grade school or high school. If not there, where will people learn? If not there in BC or Newfoundland, for example, then by necessity those people required to fill those bilingual roles would have to come from an area where people do speak French - predominantly Eastern and Northern Ontario, Québec and New Brunswick. But that’s not acceptable either, because then “Central Canada (and NB!)” get “too much power”.
It seems to me the solution is to teach more French in English areas of the country (and more English in the French ones, for sure!) and encourage more bilingualism, to that each area’s population does, in fact, have a chance at landing that cushy government job. If the education system was stronger in that regard, then the pool of candidates would actually be bilingual to begin with and then you wouldn’t have to make any hardline requirements with regards to bilingualism.
I’m not claiming the way bilingual policies are implemented at the moment are the best way to go, but I do feel that *bilingualism *is the best way to go, for all Canadians. Does that make sense to you?
Geez this stuff is complex.