On Dec. 8, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in favour of the Commission scolaire francophone des Territoires du Nord‑Ouest (CSFTNO) in a complex saga dating back roughly five years.
The court found that the GNWT made the wrong decision when it denied six children from five families admission into the French school board in 2018 and 2019.
“I feel good with the decision,” said Yvonne Careen, CSFTNO’s superintendent since 2014. “It’s going to be very helpful moving forward.”
At the time the children were refused admission, many families had a constitutional right to enrol their children in French first language (FFL) schools, as outlined in Section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Families without that right, such as the five in question, could request permission to enrol their children through the NWT’s education minister, who had the discretion to grant them admission.
Despite having the support of CSFTNO, all five families were denied by then-minister Caroline Cochrane because they did not meet the latest GNWT criteria, which is when the resulting legal proceedings began.
CSFTNO’s primary concern at the time was that, by rejecting the families’ applications, the GNWT had weakened the right to education in a minority language as detailed in Section 23 of the Charter.
One of the first major moments of the case occurred in 2020, when NWT Supreme Court Justice Paul Rouleau found that Cochrane’s decision to limit student access to francophone schools was “irrational” and “illogical.”
The GNWT later brought the issue to the Court of Appeal, which ultimately found that Cochrane was justified in her decision to deny the students’ admissions to FFL schools.
That led to CSFTNO taking the issue to the Supreme Court of Canada in 2022.
“When we got the appeal decision, then it was very clear that we had grounds to move further, because one of the judges, Judge [Patricia] Rowbotham of the Court of Appeal, she was not in agreement with the other two judges,” Careen recounted. “We knew at that point that, with a dissenting judge, we have a good shot of being heard at the Supreme Court of Canada.
“As we thought, they accepted to hear our appeal on all points that we made. The appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada was heard on February 9, 2023, and we ended up with this decision Friday, December 8, 2023.”
In 2020, the GNWT enacted new regulations concerning admissions into the territory’s FFL schools. The new regulations gave CSFTNO greater say in the students it admits into its schools. As a result, the court’s Dec. 8 decision will not have a huge impact on the admission process as it exists today.
However, the decision affirms that ‘school boards know best’ when it comes to who should be admitted into schools, Careen said.
She also noted that “it’s not only regarding admissions that the Minister of Education must consider Article 23.”
“In any decision regarding education of the minority (language in a province or territory), Section 23 must be taken under consideration,” she said. “So this is true in the Northwest Territories, but this has a pan-Canadian impact in that it’s jurisprudence that will work in favour of all the Francophone school boards and also the English school board in Quebec.”
Following the court’s decision, Careen said she and the CSFTNO board have “no ill will at all” toward the GNWT, and that she looks forward to “a new relationship of cooperation” between the two parties.
When asked for comment on the Supreme Court’s decision, a spokesperson with the Department of Education, Culture and Employment (ECE) provided the following statement:
“The Government of the Northwest Territories has received the decision from the Supreme Court of Canada and will take the time to assess the decision and how our government will implement the decision going forward,” it stated. “This is an area of the law that was previously unclear, with the Supreme Court of the NWT and the NWT Court of Appeal coming to different decisions. It dealt with important issues that the GNWT now has guidance on from the Supreme Court of Canada.
“It is important to clarify that the release of this decision does not have any impact on access to the Commission scolaire francophone Territoires du Nord-Ouest schools for the families that participated in the appeal. In October 2021, the minister of education granted the four students that would still have been impacted by the court proceedings admission to CSFTNO schools, recognizing that removal from the school could be disruptive to their education after having been immersed in the schools.
“The GNWT will continue to work in partnership with CSFTNO surrounding the admission of non-rights holders into the NWT’s francophone schools. The GNWT is committed to supporting the protection of the French language through the provision of French first language education in the NWT and to providing equitable access to education for all students.”