Francophone lawsuit proponent would drop suit in exchange for GN commitment

I am writing in response to your recent article “Nunavut’s French school board offers olive branch at public meeting.”

I was very pleased and encouraged to read Mr. Brown’s comments concerning the lawsuit that I have filed along with the CSFN to advance our language education rights.

With regard to the lawsuit, Mr. Brown stated “we don’t know if it is a good or bad thing. Of course, we want everything that the lawsuit is asking for. We just want a say in it.”

These comments were particularly encouraging for me to read given earlier statements by the APFN that strongly denounced the lawsuit that we have filed.

I don’t know Mr. Brown well but I know that he has a very good reputation as a person of integrity who cares as deeply as I do about our school. With that in mind, I strongly believe his sincerity when he states that all the parents of our school want what this lawsuit is asking for: school infrastructure and facilities of equal quality to those enjoyed by the linguistic majority in our community.

Mr. George Hickes, one of our Iqaluit MLAs, was an active participant at the public meeting, and I’m also confident that he believes in this important principle that underlies the lawsuit.

Unfortunately, an important party that has not stepped up to recognize and implement the principle of equal quality is the Government of Nunavut. I want to be clear that filing legal action against the Government of Nunavut was not an option that I chose with relish.

Litigation is tough. A government has infinite resources at its disposal. It is very much a contest of David versus Goliath.

I chose this option because I believed that it was the only way to hopefully achieve what myself, Mr. Brown and Mr. Hickes want, which is a French school with infrastructure of equal quality to other Iqaluit schools. I still do.

However, I would be extremely happy and grateful to abandon the lawsuit if Mr. Brown and Mr. Hickes could successfully lobby the GN for a binding commitment to build the needed infrastructure for Trois Soleils that is referenced in the legal action.

After all, as Mr. Brown stated so well, it is what every parent of Trois Soleils wants and deserves.

However, if sadly they are unable to successfully lobby for that binding commitment, I hope that they will personally join me in the suit. It would make me proud to have their names stand alongside mine in our fight for something that is so important.

Even if ultimately we were not successful, we could shake each other’s hand and say that we tried.

Doug Garson
Iqaluit

Email your letters to editor@nunatsiaq.com.

Nunatsiaq News welcomes letters to the editor. But we are under no obligation to publish any given letter at any given time.

In our print edition, we usually print letters on a first-come, first-served, space-available basis. In our online edition, we usually print letters as soon as we are able to prepare them for publication.

All letters are edited for length, grammar, punctuation, spelling, taste and libel. You may withhold your name by request, but we must know who you are before we publish your letter.