Vive le Francais: court

The B.C. government is often accused of failing students – now a Supreme Court judge has ruled that it did.

Decisions in the ruling will benefit the francophone community in Penticton, while snubbing Kelowna.

A group of parents and the francophone school board, Conseil-scolaire francophone de la Colombie-Britannique (CSF), took the province and Ministry of Education to court for what they called a violation of Section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees minority-language education to francophones in areas where numbers warrant it.

CSF called for new or improved school facilities in 17 communities, as well as demanding a new school board office. Parents have complained the francophone system is small and underfunded.

In the 1,600 page B.C. Supreme Court decision released on Monday, Justice Loryl Russell ordered the province to pay $6 million.

That decision comes three years after the trial began in 2013.

That money is set to be used in communities across the province to fix a “chronically underfunded” transportation system students use to get to francophone schools. She said the system was underfunded during a funding freeze between 2002/03 and 2011/12.

While the justice did not agree that all 17 of the identified communities required assistance and further funding, some communities may see immediate benefits.

According to the CSF, Penticton, Vancouver-West, Abbotsford and Sechelt should benefit quickly from the judgment.

“With respect to Abbotsford, the province’s failure to fund any new projects to construct new spaces for students between 2005 and 2011 materially contributed to the right breach. The lack of funding and the defendants’ policy of ranking the linguistic minority’s capital project proposals against the projects proposed by majority school boards with more resources materially contributed to the rights breaches. None of those breaches is justified in a free and democratic society.”

Justice Russel noted that those four communities lacked adequate facilities and the provincial government was responsible.

Other noted communities such as Squamish, Burnaby, the North-east of Vancouver and Whistler (secondary instruction) have been identified as not having access to an equivalent infrastructure, which needs to be addressed.  

Kelowna was noted in the decision, but was not considered by Justice Russell as a francophone community in dire straits.

“I find that rightsholders in the following communities are receiving appropriate facilities in light of the number of children that would avail themselves of a programme in the best possible circumstances: Whistler (elementary education), Nelson, Richmond, Southeast Vancouver, Nanaimo, Kelowna and Chilliwack,” read Russel's judgment.

The justice also denied the plaintiffs’ claim for a new school board office.

The president of the francophone parent's association, Marie-Pierre Lavoie, said while they did not win on every point of the lawsuit they did win the most important one – changing the funding system applicable to the construction and rehabilitation of francophone schools to better meet their needs

Lavoie added that the judgment will have major repercussions in B.C. and may also affect francophone minority communities throughout Canada.