Case information

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Case summaries are prepared by the Office of the Registrar of the Supreme Court of Canada (Law Branch). Please note that summaries are not provided to the Judges of the Court. They are placed on the Court file and website for information purposes only.

Charter of rights - Constitutional law - Minority language educational rights - Minority French-language educational facility - Substantive equality - Approach to be taken by court in assessing real equivalence of school facilities of minority French-language school with majority English-language school facilities for purpose of determining whether school facilities of French-language school meet requirements of s. 23 of Charter - Stage of analysis at which province’s financial resources relevant - In addition to establishing that numbers warrant educational facilities, whether rights-holder parents must show that it is “practically possible” to provide facilities equivalent to those provided to linguistic majority and must prove share of responsibility of province and/or school board for infringement of s. 23 - Role played by school board’s power of management and control in analyzing real equivalence of school facilities - Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, s. 23.

École Rose-des-Vents is a French-language elementary school that was established in Vancouver in 2001 and has about 350 students. It is the only French-language elementary school serving those living west of Main Street. For many years, the parents of students attending the school have called for an educational facility whose quality is equivalent to that of the educational facilities provided to the English-speaking majority in the same catchment area.

In 2010, a group of parents whose children attended the school filed a petition in the Supreme Court of British Columbia seeking a declaration that their rights guaranteed by s. 23 of the Charter had been infringed because their school facilities did not meet the standards set by that constitutional provision. The parents argued that École Rose-des-vents was overcrowded and not as easily accessible as English-language schools in the area and that its facilities were of poor quality. The petition filed by the parents named the Ministry of Education of British Columbia and the Conseil scolaire francophone de la Colombie-Britannique as respondents.

A judge sitting as a case management judge ordered that the petition be heard in three phases, the first of which would involve determining whether the facilities at École Rose-des-Vents and the transportation afforded to the children of the members of the group of parents were equivalent to the facilities and transportation afforded to students attending English-language schools in a comparable situation. The same judge ordered that certain paragraphs be struck from the response of the Attorney General of British Columbia on the basis that they were irrelevant to that phase of the litigation. At the close of the first phase of the proceedings, a declaration was made that rights-holder parents living west of Main Street in Vancouver were not being provided the French-language educational facilities guaranteed to them by s. 23 of the Charter. The Court of Appeal allowed the province’s appeal and set aside both the declaration concerning s. 23 of the Charter and the order striking paragraphs from the Attorney General’s response.