Jurisprudence

Jurisprudence

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

 Under Section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Ontario’s Francophones have a right to French-language elementary and secondary education.

Section 23

Section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms pertains to the right to instruction in the language of the official language minority. In Ontario, this language is French. Section 23 states that, wherever their numbers warrant, Francophones have a right to publicly-funded French-language elementary and secondary education.

Language of instruction

• 23. (1) Citizens of Canada

  • (a) whose first language learned and still understood is that of the English or French linguistic minority population of the province in which they reside, or

  • (b) who have received their primary school instruction in Canada in English or French and reside in a province where the language in which they received that instruction is the language of the English or French linguistic minority population of the province,

  have the right to have their children receive primary and secondary school instruction in that language in that province. (93)

• Marginal note:Continuity of language instruction

  (2) Citizens of Canada of whom any child has received or is receiving primary or secondary school instruction in English or French in Canada, have the right to have all their children receive primary and secondary school instruction in the same language.

• Marginal note:Application where numbers warrant

  (3) The right of citizens of Canada under subsections (1) and (2) to have their children receive primary and secondary school instruction in the language of the English or French linguistic minority population of a province

  • (a) applies wherever in the province the number of children of citizens who have such a right is sufficient to warrant the provision to them out of public funds of minority language instruction; and

  • (b) includes, where the number of those children so warrants, the right to have them receive that instruction in minority language educational facilities provided out of public funds.