By carrying out, in February 2020, its very questionable project to abolish the school boards, the CAQ government would have liked to humiliate the French-speaking community in Quebec, which it could not have done better. Why ? Because this inappropriate plan to centralize all powers in education in Quebec was so badly put together that it allowed the province’s nine English-language school boards to escape it, they and they alone, and with disarming ease.
To do so, they just had to go to Superior Court brandishing section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and that was it. This section guarantees the right to education in the minority language, and this is what Judge Sylvain Lussier, who heard the case, pointed out. He added that Anglophones would suffer “irreparable harm” if Bill 40 came into force and their school boards disappeared with the others to be replaced by service centers reporting directly to Quebec. Judge Lussier therefore exempted them (August 2020), pending a judgment on the merits of the question, a judgment that is still awaited. The Legault government immediately appealed this decision, but it was dismissed in the Court of Appeal in September 2020.
This “irreparable prejudice” is therefore the Francophone majority who suffered it when the law came into force, which is the world upside down in the Quebec context. But everything happened as if the French speakers had seen nothing. They did not understand that they had just lost their only real voice in education, that is, their elected school boards. Without this independent advice, how could we still open the door to an incompetent director general, as the Commission scolaire du Val-des-Cerfs (Granby) was able to do a few years ago?
A government that improvises can lead you anywhere, as we can see with the abolition of school boards. In this case, the reaction of English speakers and the outcome of a probable challenge on their part were nevertheless foreseeable by the CAQ strategists, if any. But, unconsciously or not, they ensured that only the French-language school boards found themselves victims of a flawed reform, doomed to failure from the outset. This is how the Legault government created a two-speed Quebec in education to the detriment of the majority. It’s downright shameful!
Canadian dunce
What is more, this government has ensured that Quebec now ranks at the bottom of the class in Canada in terms of school representation. In the nine other provinces and the three territories, there are everywhere school boards where Francophone school boards made up of elected officials administer the schools and represent the parents, in partnership with their government. Same thing with English speakers. However, the models of Rest of Canada shouldn’t they inspire François Legault, this former separatist who became a federalist after losing his faith?
The abolition of school boards is a big miss of the CAQ, of “anything” that we will have to talk about again during the election campaign, given the manifest injustice caused to Francophones and the legal loopholes created. For example, what will happen to the school tax, which only English school boards can still collect as local government? By what right does the government now take it itself from the French-speaking side, where it has nevertheless eliminated the school boards? On this account, why would he not draw directly on the land wealth of the municipalities to finance hospitals, or even the repair of roads? On this side too, there are things that are wrong.