When Longueuil announced that it was obliged to slaughter deer, opponents were heard. Lawyer Anne-France Goldwater took the cause head on and took it to court.
Whatever one thinks of the seriousness of this case in the face of the scientific issues of deer overpopulation, it is clear that the rights of deer were carefully weighed by the court up to the Court of Appeal.
The same cannot be said for children’s right to their education during the fall strike weeks. A strike unprecedented in its duration. No one asserted children’s right to education; our wealth, our succession.
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The school closed its doors to disadvantaged or more vulnerable young people, causing them significant harm not only for the current year, but potentially jeopardizing their progress in the longer term.
However, it is a fundamental right. Quebec is a signatory to international conventions on the right to education. In concrete terms, do we have an idea of the moment from which the right to education is violated by a labor conflict, a strike? A day, a week, a month, a year?
For example, in the Quebec Public Education Act, there are 180 school days. Children from schools affiliated with the FAE will only have 156 in 2023-2024. On the face of it, this grossly violates their fundamental right to education.
Strike right
I know the union response by heart. The right to strike is a sacred right enshrined by the Supreme Court. To the point where the special laws previously forcing a return to work would no longer be valid today.
What we forget is that the Supreme Court came to this interpretation after multiple appeals orchestrated by rich and powerful unions. Based on the right of association recognized in the charter, they pushed cases all the way to the Supreme Court, leading to increasingly broad interpretations.
Finally, in a case in Saskatchewan in 2015, the Supreme Court rendered a historic decision conferring a sacred character on the right to strike.
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In the case before us, two rights clash: the right to strike and the right to education. Generally, in these cases, the court seeks a balance.
The problem is that no one asserts the right to education. No one has brought to court the fate of children sent away from school for weeks.
Not parent committees.
Not a lawyer, a children’s Goldwater.
Not the government.
There is therefore no balance between a right that powerful associations have asserted for decades and a right that no one submits to the courts.
As a result, the right to education has been violated. It is I who affirm this as a disappointed citizen. What would the courts have thought? We may never know.
Unfortunately, children’s rights do not carry much weight in Quebec.
Neither does education.