English school boards begin legal challenge of Bill 40
A group representing all nine of Quebec’s English school boards has begun its legal challenge of Bill 40, the legislation adopted this year that abolishes all school boards in the province.
The hearing began Tuesday morning at the Montreal courthouse before Superior Court Justice Sylvain Lussier.
The judge is expected to hear arguments from both sides of the issue over the course of three days this week. The case pits the Quebec English School Boards Association (QESBA) against Quebec’s attorney-general.
The association’s director general, Russell Copeman, and its president, Dan Lamoureux, attended the hearing while more than 20 people were following it remotely by computer at one point Tuesday afternoon. (Limits have been placed on the number of people allowed in a courtroom during the pandemic.)
While the type of decision the QESBA is seeking is commonly referred to as an injunction, Lussier said he was “perturbed” by the use of the word when it comes to seeking action against the government. The judge said the word suggests he might have to have someone arrested. Lawyers from both sides in the case agreed to refer to it instead as an exemption, or a stay, from the legislation.
Under Bill 40, all school boards are to be replaced by “service centres.” The bill was passed in the National Assembly in February after the CAQ government invoked closure and Education Minister Jean-françois Roberge made last-minute amendments, including allowing commissioners in the English network to continue to work in their existing roles until Nov. 1.
Quebec’s nine English boards — including Lester B Pearson, English Montreal, Sir Wilfrid Laurier and Eastern Townships — are challenging Bill 40 in court. The boards represent 268 schools and 31 vocational centres.
Perri Ravon, representing the English school boards, was the first lawyer to make arguments Tuesday. She said Bill 40 is “a clear case of unconstitutionality” and a violation of the rights of English-speaking Quebecers as a minority in the province.
“Bill 40 completely transforms who can represent the English-speaking community when it comes to minority-language education and what powers of management such representatives actually have,” Ravon said.
“In other words, Bill 40 bears directly on the power of management and control that belongs to the English speaking of Quebec by virtue of Section 23” of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
In 2014, the last year school board elections were held in Quebec, more than 270,000 people were on the English school boards electoral lists. Anyone on the electoral lists could run for a position on a school board. This is the same all over Canada, Ravon said, but Bill 40 eliminates 99 per cent of the people who can be part of the service centres that will replace boards.
“This is a clear case of unconstitutionality, if we want to use that language,” she said. “The (Supreme Court of Canada) said the majority cannot be expected to appreciate the complex ways in which education and management impact language and culture. The minority needs to run its own educational institutions and that is an exclusive right and it’s an exclusive power and here (under Bill 40) we have staff members designated to do that.”
Under Bill 40, an English speaking person who wants to be part of the decision-making process in a service centre would have to be a parent of a child in school and would have to have previously sat on a governing board of one of their children’s schools, at least for the first time they are elected to a service centre.
There are currently a maximum of 4,100 positions on governing boards in all of the English language schools in Quebec.
“It might (actually) be as low as 1,100,” Ravon said while emphasizing how few English-speaking Quebecers could potentially run as candidates to be elected to the government’s service centres.
The case is to resume Thursday morning.