Jean-Pierre Hachey

The appeal addressed the test for substantive equivalence under s. 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in minority language education.

The court held equivalence must be assessed holistically from the perspective of rights holders, including facilities, programming, and travel burdens, rather than formal cost parity.

The court restored a declaration that the minority-language educational experience was not equivalent to nearby majority-language alternatives, while leaving responsibility and remedy issues to later phases.

The court also upheld phased proceedings and restored special costs for the successful public interest litigants.

The appellants sought to file French-language exhibits attached to affidavits in constitutional litigation concerning minority-language education rights.

The majority held that British Columbia law required civil court proceedings, including exhibits relied on for their content, to be in English unless impracticable, and that this framework displaced residual inherent jurisdiction to admit untranslated French documents.

The Court further held that the 1731 English statute was received into provincial law and had not been displaced for this issue.

The dissent would have recognized continued inherent jurisdiction absent clear legislative ouster and remitted the matter for discretionary determination.

The appeal was dismissed, with costs awarded to the appellants.

In an administrative law appeal, the appellant municipality challenged a referral decision by a provincial human rights commission to appoint a board of inquiry regarding alleged discriminatory school-funding arrangements affecting a minority-language school community.

The Court held that referral decisions at this preliminary screening stage are reviewable on reasonableness, with strong judicial restraint against premature intervention in ongoing administrative processes.

The Court clarified that older jurisdictional framing tied to preliminary questions should no longer govern this context.

Applying the proper standard, the commission had a reasonable basis in law and on the evidence to refer the novel and complex complaints for inquiry.