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Abstract
This article studies the claims for non-territorial autonomy (NTA) of Canada's francophone minority communities (FMCs)—encompassing the over one million French-speaking citizens that live outside the province of Québec—before the courts since the adoption of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The findings show that Canadian courts have sought to apply principles of NTA to accommodate FMCs by extending the Canadian language rights regime in order to apply some principles of non-territorial autonomy, in the form of ‘institutional completeness’. In so doing, the courts have opened the door to a legal recognition of positive group rights for this minority.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to acknowledge the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for funding this research.
Notes
1. Personal translation.
2. This institutional arrangement created French-speaking minorities in the other three original provinces of the newly founded country, and in all provinces to join the Confederation subsequently. These minorities often had little to no protection related to the recognition of their language.
3. Personal translation.
4. Personal translation.
5. This, however, may be less true for the Acadians in New Brunswick, who had formulated a secessionist project and claimed half of the province's territory, through the Acadian Party's platform, in the 1970s.
6. Personal translation.
7. Personal translation.
8. Personal translation.
9. The House of Commons debates taking place before the adoption of the Bill, in 1987, demonstrate that the legislators were manifestly aiming to upgrade the ‘constitutional minimum’ set by the trilogy (Newman, Citation2002, pp. 8–9).
10. Personal translation.
11. Personal translation.
12. Part VII of the Official Languages Act, added in 2005, legally binds the federal government to take positive measures towards the sustainability and development of official language minorities in Canada.
13. Personal translation.
14. The ‘sliding scale’ approach is based on section 23 of the Charter and states the levels of institutional requirements to be provided for particular numbers of students to be instructed in the language of the minority.