Legal Dispute
Language in Canada is defined federally by the Official Languages Act since 1969 and is part of the Constitution of Canada since 1982. Parts of the Charter of the French language have been amended in response to rulings by Quebec Courts which were upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada.
Before 1982, the only part of the Charter of the French Language that could be challenged constitutionally was that of the language of legislation and the courts. It was challenged in 1979 by Peter Blaikie, Roland Durand and Yoine Goldstein (Attorney General of Quebec v. Blaikie).
In 1982, the patriation of the Canadian constitution occurred as the British Parliament passed the Canada Act 1982. This act enacted the Constitution Act, 1982 for Canada (including the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms) whose section 23 introduced the notion of "minority language education rights". This novelty opened another door to a constitutional dispute of Quebec's Charter of the French Language.
Alliance Quebec, an anglophone rights lobby group, was founded in May 1982. It is mainly through this civil association that various lawyers challenged the constitutionality of Quebec's territorial language policy.
Read more about this topic: Charter Of The French Language
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