Judge orders Élections Québec to prepare voter reminder cards in French and English
Élections Québec announced earlier this month that it would only send voter information documents in French this year to comply with Quebec's language laws. (Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press)Social SharingA Quebec civil court judge says Élections Québec's plan to mail French-only voting information documents this year would infringe on the right to vote of English-speakers in the province.
Judge Sylvain Lussier ordered Élections Québec to prepare election reminder cards in English and in French, in a judgment issued Wednesday morning. The agency had announced earlier this month that, for the first time in a general election, it would only mail French-language documents to comply with the province's language laws.
"The status of French is not restricted by the permission to inform English-speaking voters in their own language," Lussier wrote in his analysis.
The court was asked to grant a provisional interlocutory injunction and exempt the provincial agency from a section of Quebec's Charter of the French Language that makes French the only language of communication for public institutions.
In his decision, Lussier said he partially accepted the provisional interlocutory injunction, granting it for a period of 10 days.
Geoffrey Chambers is the plaintiff in the case. He's the former president of the Quebec Community Groups Network, known today as the TALQ.
Élections Québec mails out three different documents to voters ahead of provincial elections: an election guide, a notice of entry and a reminder card.
The court said ordering Élections Québec to produce and mail an English version of the first two documents at this stage was “unrealistic and extremely costly.”
For now, the judge said he can only order the agency to prepare the reminder cards. Since the mail rollout for those documents falls outside the 10-day injunction period, another judicial process will be needed to order the actual mailing of the documents.
The reminder cards will include a list of candidates in the voter’s riding as well as details on where and when to vote. Quebecers head to the polls on Oct. 5.
In his decision, written in French, Lussier said it was obvious that "a great number" of anglophone seniors would not be able to exercise their right to vote in the absence of "comprehensible information."
He pointed to the recent federal election in Terrebonne, where a single miscounted vote nullified the results.
"Is it in the public interest to urgently deprive the English-speaking community of Quebec of the right it has always enjoyed to receive election information in English?," reads Lussier's judgment.
"To ask the question is to answer it."
Earlier this month, a spokesperson for Élections Québec, Julie St-Arnaud Drolet, said the agency had pleaded to no avail with Quebec to be able to send basic voting information in both French and English.
Responding to the fallout of Élections Québec's announcement, Premier Christine Fréchette said English-speaking voters could still access the information they needed online and that their rights were respected.
Élections Québec had previously said that voters could access information in English on its website or by calling the agency if they fell under the groups exempted by the Charter of the French Language.
Lussier said the court was not convinced that those alternatives were enough to allow all Anglophones in Quebec to access proper voting information.
Cassandra Yanez-Leyton is a journalist for CBC News based in Montreal. You can email her story ideas at cassandra.yanez-leyton@cbc.ca.
