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> can request services in French even in a completely anglo region of say, ontario and I'd be legally entitled to do so. At a federal and provincial level. On
by 908B64B197 4y ago
> can request services in French even in a completely anglo region of say, ontario and I'd be legally entitled to do so. At a federal and provincial level.
Ontario and the feds could just vote similar laws.
My understanding is that anyone among the feds trying that would just lose their next elections but at the province level it seems doable.
- mardifoufs 4y agoThat depends on how the Supreme court sees the situation. We don't have a very coherent constitutional framework so everything is very fuzzy. I wouldn't be surprised if legault went as far as to use the non withstanding clause if it came to that (Québec did that in the past, and there would be almost 0 backlash since he'd be "standing for our language/standing against the anglo feds"). Actually that would probably be the best thing that could happen to Legault,and would make the nationalist pandering extremely effective. That "implicit" threat is the reason why the qc government has been able to basically ignore charter rights when it comes to language. That's why for example, children with non anglocanadian parents cannot get an English education until college. Any attempt to strike that down judicially, even if successful, will just lead to invoking the clause and a surge of nationalist sentiment. Though that policy in particular is probably what saved french and kept it relevant, so its hard to argue against the results. I wouldn't say that the same power dynamic applies to Ontario at all. Even if they were to pull back on bilinguism, they'd certainly get slapped in court and not push further. Because there's no real political capital to gain in invoking the clause for an issue like bilinguism in anglocanada.