III. Minority Language Education Rights
Page 9 of 42
2. Homogeneous Schools
Doucet-Boudreau v. Nova Scotia (Department of Education)
A recent decision of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court34 illustrates the complex social, historical and geographical factors involved in any consideration of the numbers test under section 23 of the Charter, which is key to determining the level of educational services to be provided and how they should be delivered.
The case involves francophone parents from five regions of Nova Scotia. Their long-standing requests for access to homogeneous French language educational programs and schools at the secondary level had met with little success. This was due in part to the provincial government’s failure over many years to take an active role in promoting the establishment and growth of minority language education at both primary and secondary school levels. As well, the francophone communities were divided by profound disagreements over the desirability of maintaining so-called bilingual programs and mixed schools with instruction in both English and French.
This division among the communities prompted the province-wide French language school board (Conseil scolaire acadien provincial) to adopt a gradualist approach to establishing fully homogeneous programs and schools for students under its jurisdiction. However, the phasing out of bilingual programs was characterized by significant delays that became increasingly unacceptable to parents who felt their rights under section 23 of the Charter were being ignored. Further delays were caused by the failure of the government to move ahead with the approval of funds and the construction of new school buildings which would have brought a quick end to the sharing of school facilities by both English and French language programs.
The evidence heard by the Court was extensive, including testimony of many of the individual plaintiffs (either orally or by affidavit), historical, linguistic and demographic facts presented by expert witnesses, and testimony from both government officials and representatives of the Conseil scolaire acadien provincial. The presiding judge reviewed the historical evolution of Acadian communities, their efforts to secure even minimal access to education in French, the levels of assimilation of francophone children, and the importance of institutional support to the survival of a minority language and emphasized that these factors are essential to an understanding of the urgent need to take steps to help preserve and develop minority French language communities.
The judge noted that assimilation rates established by expert testimony showed that “the total number of Acadians and francophones in Nova Scotia is falling and that the rate of assimilation in all regions of Nova Scotia varies between 13.5% and 59.3%, depending upon the region. In fact, the rate of assimilation increased between 1991 and 1996 in Nova Scotia, with the exception of the Halifax-Dartmouth region.”35 The encouraging progress made in Halifax-Dartmouth was attributed by the judge (as well as several witnesses) to the existence there of a homogeneous French language school providing a full range of courses at both the primary and secondary levels. Indeed, the judge underscored that the alarming rates of assimilation in some regions of the province were the inevitable result of the lack of proper minority language school facilities.
The advent of a French language school board in 1996 with province-wide jurisdiction to deliver and manage minority official language education marked a new stage in the reform of the educational system in Nova Scotia, bringing it into line with the requirements of section 23 of the Charter. Since the new school board inherited numerous schools that had mixed programs and shared their facilities with students enrolled with English language boards, it adopted a policy designed to introduce homogeneous French language programs within a set time frame. As mentioned above, significant numbers of francophone parents opposed homogeneous programs and schools, believing that the use of French as the only language of instruction would impede the bilingual development of their children, limit their access to the province’s English language universities and diminish their chances for social mobility.
In response to these concerns the trial judge cited parts of an extensive study dealing with language acquisition and bilingualism: “the fears of many parents of francophone origin in Nova Scotia regarding the potentially harmful effects of an education too highly concentrated in French are groundless. On the contrary, two types of statistical analysis (variance analysis and multiple regression) have allowed us to conclude that the more an education is strong in French, the better the level of bilingualism achieved and, additionally, that bilingualism is of an additive nature. Francophone psycholinguistic development is favoured by a strong education in French and development in English language competency is in no way diminished by an education in French.”36
