Supreme Court sued over its refusal to translate decisions before 1970 into French

By The Canadian Press on November 1, 2024.

Lawyer Francois Cote, right, speaks as Daniel Turp, centre, and Etienne-Alexis Boucher of Droits collectifs Quebec look on during a media availability at Federal Court in Montreal, Friday. The rights group is taking the Supreme Court of Canada's registrar's office to court over its refusal to translate historic English-only decisions to French as required by the country's Official Languages Act. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sidhartha Banerjee

MONTREAL – A Quebec civil rights group is suing the office of the registrar of the Supreme Court of Canada because of the high court’s refusal to translate its historic decisions into French.

Droits collectifs Québec says it filed an application today in Federal Court after failing to get the office of the registrar – which serves as the administrative body for the court – to conform to the Official Languages Act.

The lawsuit involves more than 6,000 decisions that were rendered between 1867 and 1969, the year the Official Languages Act came into effect, requiring federal institutions to publish content in English and in French.

The Supreme Court has been translating decisions since 1970 but has argued to the official languages commissioner that the law doesn’t apply retroactively.

But the commissioner ruled in September that while that’s true, any decisions published on the court’s website must be available in both official languages.

The Quebec rights group says it has applied to the Federal Court to force the Supreme Court to abide by the language commissioner’s ruling.