Draft:Act 115

The Act to implement court rulings on the language of instruction (" Bill 115 ") is a Quebec amending act of the Charest government which, among other things, amends the Charter of the French Language in response to the Supreme Court of Canada's Nguyen v. Quebec ruling.

The bill delegates to the Conseil des ministres the task of defining the conditions under which a child may access subsidized English-language schools in Quebec, the main criterion being attendance at an unsubsidized English-language school for three years or more.

The Bill 115 was tabled in the Quebec National Assembly on October 18, 2010 by Christine St-Pierre, Minister responsible for the application of the Charter of the French Language. The government used the gag order procedure, which allows the bill to be passed by limiting debate in the Quebec National Assembly. The act was passed the very next day, on October 19, 2010.

Background and consequences
In 2002, Bernard Landry's PQ government passed Bill 104 to address the problem of " bridge schools ". A "école-passerelle" is a private English-language school that escapes Bill 101 because it is not subsidized, and where Francophone or allophone parents can enroll their child in the first year of primary school in order to acquire the right to enroll the same child in a public (and therefore free) English-language school in the second year and for the rest of his or her school career. This act was immediately challenged; the Quebec Court of Appeal declared it unconstitutional, and the Quebec government appealed to the Supreme Court.

In 2009, in Nguyen v. Québec, the Supreme Court recognized that parents using bridging schools were doing so knowingly to circumvent Bill 101, but it nonetheless struck down Bill 104 as excessive, specifying that each child's "authentic educational path" must be taken into account. An outcry arose in Quebec, and many parties (including the Parti québécois, the Mouvement national des Québécois and a number of columnists) demanded that the government apply the " notwithstanding clause " of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This clause authorizes a provincial government to evade an obligation under the Charter, as ruled by the Supreme Court. The Charest government refuses to do so, notably to preserve its English-speaking electoral base, fiercely opposed to this option. In the end, a multi-criteria evaluation grid was drawn up, and Bill 115 allowed for the enactment of a regulation establishing the grid. The main criterion adopted was that of having attended an unsubsidized English-language school for not just one year, but three.

Before Bill 104 was passed, there were 1,100 cases a year of children falling through the cracks of Act 101. In 2012, after the adoption of Act 115, there were only around thirty.

Adoption
The act was originally introduced as An Act to amend the Charter of the French language and other legislative provisions( Bill 103). However, judging that the debates were dragging on, the government abandoned this bill to introduce the more succinct Bill 115.

Act 115 was passed by the National Assembly on October 19, 2010 by 61 votes to 54.