Francis P. Poulin

Two traffic-offence appellants argued Alberta had a constitutional obligation to enact, print, and publish legislation in both French and English based on the 1867 Address and 1870 constitutional instruments.

A majority held no entrenched constitutional guarantee of legislative bilingualism applied to Alberta through those texts, rejected related fiduciary-duty arguments, and dismissed both appeals.

The Court answered the constitutional questions in Alberta's favour while awarding the appellants party-and-party costs in this Court and below.

In this constitutional and procedural appeal concerning minority-language education litigation, the Court upheld the finding that trial-level conduct created a reasonable apprehension of bias and warranted a new trial on remitted issues.

The Court confirmed that, absent territorial delegation, a minority-language school board cannot unilaterally expand admissions beyond criteria set by valid regulation under s. 23 of the Charter.

The Court rejected treating a judge’s community affiliation alone as a sufficient basis for bias without stronger contextual evidence.

It further held that statutory language-rights claims under territorial legislation should proceed at the new trial on a full evidentiary record.

The appeal was largely dismissed, with no order as to costs.