Arsenault-Cameron v. Prince Edward Island, [2000] 1 S.C.R. 3, 2000 SCC 1, is a landmark Supreme Court of Canada

Supreme Court of Canada

The Supreme Court of Canada is the highest court of Canada and is the final court of appeals in the Canadian justice system. The court grants permission to between 40 and 75 litigants each year to appeal decisions rendered by provincial, territorial and federal appellate courts, and its decisions...

 decision on minority language

Minority language

A minority language is a language spoken by a minority of the population of a territory. Such people are termed linguistic minorities or language minorities.-International politics:...

 rights. The Court found that the numbers of Francophone children in Summerside

Summerside, Prince Edward Island

Summerside is a Canadian city in Prince County, Prince Edward Island. It is the second largest city in the province and the principal municipality for the western part of the island.- History :...

, Prince Edward Island

Prince Edward Island

Prince Edward Island is a Canadian province consisting of an island of the same name, as well as other islands. The maritime province is the smallest in the nation in both land area and population...

 warranted French language

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 education in Summerside, under section 23

Section Twenty-three of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Section Twenty-three of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is the section of the Charter that constitutionally guarantees minority language educational rights to French-speaking communities outside Quebec, and, to a lesser extent, English-speaking minorities in Quebec...

 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a bill of rights entrenched in the Constitution of Canada. It forms the first part of the Constitution Act, 1982...

, and the province was constitutionally obligated to create a French language school.

Background

A number of Francophone families living in Summerside made a request to the French Language Board to build a French language school in the community rather than bus the children to the closest French school 57 minutes away. The Board made a proposal to the Minister which was rejected.

The family applied for a declaration against the province to build a school in Summerside. At trial the declaration was granted but was overturned on appeal.

In the decision of Arsenault-Cameron v. Prince Edward Island, [1999] 3 S.C.R. 851, prior to the language rights hearing, the counsel for the government sought to have Bastarache recuse himself for reasonable apprehension of bias

Reasonable apprehension of bias

In Canadian law, a reasonable apprehension of bias is a legal standard for disqualifying judges and administrative decision-makers for bias. Bias of the decision-maker can be real or merely perceived....

 due to his past history of championing the French language. In an application to Bastarache, he held that he was not biased to hear the case, and so did not recuse himself.

Opinion of the Court

Major and Bastarache, writing for a unanimous court, applied a purposive interpretation to section 23 of the Charter. He found that the purpose of the right is to redress past injustices and provide "an official language minority with equal access to high quality education in its own language in circumstances where community development will be enhanced."