Brief to the Committee on Culture and Education : Quebec and the Minority Language Educational Rights and Canada’s English Linguistic Minority Communities: A New Partnership

Voting in elections is an intrinsic right for all Quebecers. It is beyond democratic tradition for government to capriciously remove these rights without a pressing and substantial reason. Quebec’s English public school system is a key institution of the English-speaking community of Quebec, a linguistic minority community. The management and control of these institutions is a matter of governance subject to minority language educational rights contained in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and Quebec’s democratic tradition, expressed in the political rights guaranteed by the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.