Twelve years ago, a Bloc Québécois MP stood in the House of Commons to proclaim his party’s support for the court challenges program — a federal initiative that had been providing grants to individuals and groups who sought to defend or assert their constitutional or language rights through the courts.
Stephen Harper’s Conservative government announced its intention to eliminate funding for the program in 2006.
“Philosopher and writer Paul Valéry said that the greatness of a civilization is measured in its treatment of minorities,” said Réal Ménard, who was the MP for Hochelaga from 1993 to 2009.
The Bloc Quebecois, Menard said, “has always been extremely supportive of the court challenges program.”
Twelve years later, the Bloc has discovered a limit to its enthusiasm for the program, which was reinstated by Justin Trudeau’s government in 2017. Its zeal appears to end at Bill 21, the Quebec law that bans many of the province’s public servants from wearing religious symbols or articles clothing, such as hijabs or turbans, while at work.
The Montreal Gazette reported this week that Montreal’s English school board received $125,000 through the program to help fund a legal challenge to Bill 21. The school board quickly renounced the funding, but not before the Bloc — which had been demanding that the federal government stay out of the fight over Quebec’s so-called secularism law — expressed its vehement displeasure.
When challenged by Bloc Leader Yves-François Blanchet in the House this week, Trudeau was quick to note that the court challenges program is an arms-length institution that makes its funding decisions completely independent of the federal government.
We don’t know if the court challenges program is funding any other challenges to Bill 21; the grants are confidential. But it provide federal support to a cause that Trudeau has been reluctant to engage with directly.
The history here is long and rich.
The program that died many deaths
The court challenges program actually has its roots in Pierre Trudeau’s push to establish official bilingualism — and his own government’s reluctance to directly intervene against Bill 101, the French-language charter that was introduced in 1977 by Quebec’s Parti Québécois government.