The upcoming Throne Speech provides Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with a golden opportunity to make good on a longstanding pledge – and take the final steps needed to modernize the Official Languages Act. Time and circumstances have converged. As Parliament resumes later this month, consensus on how to update the Act has already been achieved. … Read more
As Prime Minister Justin Trudeau prepares his third Throne Speech and a return to Parliament, he has a golden opportunity to make good on his longstanding pledge to modernize the Official Languages Act and fulfill his vision of linguistic duality and strong official language minority communities. Read more
Our community has the Constitutional right to manage and control our schools. The Coalition Avenir Québec government has taken this right away from our English-speaking community – and together we must fight to take back this fundamental right. All nine of our English school boards along with the Quebec English School Boards Association have launched … Read more
By Geoffrey Chambers The focus of most Quebecers remains the pandemic, a safe return of our children to school and the reopening of our economy. However, our government appears to have shifted its focus to language. And as it does so, it is once again minimizing the importance of the contributions to this province by … Read more
Rather than picking fights with our community, we urge the Legault government to alter course, work with us, and cease defining us as a problem, writes QCGN President Geoffrey Chambers in this opinion piece for The Gazette. Chambers argues that today’s English-speaking community is invested in Quebec. We have encouraged and enabled our children to … Read more
Quebec Superior Court has granted a stay to English school boards challenging a provincial government law abolishing them, pending the outcome of a legal challenge on its merits. The province passed the law — known as Bill 40 — in February, abolishing school boards and replacing them with service centres, eliminating school board elections for … Read more
A Quebec Superior Court judge has ruled in favour of the Quebec English School Boards Association (QESBA) request for a stay on Bill 40, the law that abolishes school boards and replaces them with service centres. “We are very pleased with the decision today which has the effect of suspending the application of Bill 40 … Read more
Quebec’s English School boards will remain as they are after the province’s superior court judged in favour on a stay of Bill 40 on Monday. The Quebec English School Board Association (QESBA) is applauding the court’s judgment on the education reform bill, a legislation that abolishes boards across the province and replaces them with service … Read more
Quebec’s plan to change English school boards into service centres has been put on ice temporarily after a Quebec Superior Court justice ruled that the plan raised “very serious questions” pertaining to the constitutionality of Bill 40. Justice Sylvain Lussier also ruled that the disappearance of English-language school boards (and their transformation into English-language school … Read more
The Quebec Community Groups Network applauded a Quebec Superior Court decision to suspend the application of Quebec government reforms to the governance of English school boards while the courts review the constitutionality of Bill 40: An Act to amend mainly the Education Act with regard to school organization and governance. Read more
As the economic recovery from COVID-19 begins, the Quebec Community Groups Network (QCGN) has announced 10 innovative projects that will help vulnerable English-speaking youth and seniors find employment and fight isolation. A total of $1.1 million of fresh funding has been committed, via the renewal of the Community Innovation Fund (CIF) financed through the Government … Read more
In a landmark decision today, the Supreme Court of Canada has given a generous and broad interpretation of Section 23 of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees minority language educational rights to French-speaking communities outside Quebec and to the English-speaking minority within Quebec. In the decision Chief Justice Richard Wagner states that “the … Read more