CONSTITUTIONAL GUARANTEES AND EDUCATION IN QUEBEC

Résumé

No matter how fair-minded a man may think he is, remove from him a choice to which he has become accustomed and he at once looks back on it as having been a right; in his indignation, the removal has become an intolerable affront to freedom. Was the freedom to choose the language in which ones child was to be educated at public expense - long available almost uniquely in Quebec - a right? Or a privilege, disturbing to the wider interests of society? Magor examines with care the Canadian story of rights in parental choice of education, and shows that in law it is difficult to hold that language is a necessary adjunct to the religious freedom that the British North America Act does guarantee. He finds a potentially more hopeful line in law in the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms of Quebec itself (even though it is subject to amendment by the Legislature if Law 101 were to be challenged on its basis).