Nunavut’s French school board seeks support for legal challenge

Trois-Soleils students listen to a musical performance in 2011. Nunavut’s French-language school board has filed a legal challenge against the GN asking for more resources for the territory’s only French school. (FILE PHOTO)

Nunavut’s French-language school board will host a public consultation this week to gauge support for a legal challenge it launched against the territorial government earlier this year.

In February, the Commission scolaire francophone du Nunavut (CSFN), along with parent and lawyer Doug Garson, filed the lawsuit demanding the GN offer French-language education and school facilities on par with Iqaluit’s other schools, where English is the dominant language.

The lawsuit calls on the Government of Nunavut to live up to obligations under Section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms — the section that’s supposed to guarantee minority language educational rights to French-speaking communities outside of Quebec.

But the lawsuit has been one of many sticking points for a group of parents whose children attend Iqaluit’s École des Trois-Soleils, Nunavut’s only French-language school. They have publicly denounced the lawsuit.

On May 21, the CSFN will hold a public meeting at the school which will function as an information session about the legal challenge.

But the school board will also hold a vote to gauge support for the lawsuit, said CSFN chair Michel Potvin.

“The goal is a public consultation in order to secure a mandate to continue on with the lawsuit,” Potvin said.

Since the legal challenge was initially launched, Potvin said parents he’s spoken to have said they’re not against the principle behind the lawsuit, but they felt they needed more details.

“Of course, we want everything the lawsuit is asking, we just want to have a say in it,” said parent Tim Brown, following a public school board meeting in April.

It’s not clear what kind of support the school board is looking for to secure that mandate. Potvin said he wouldn’t comment on what the CSFN would do in the case of a vote against the lawsuit.

“We’ll look at the overall results and make a decision,” he said.

The CSFN also announced May 19 the resignation of commissioner Jacques Fortier.

Fortier had served as the president of the five-member council of commissioners until he was forced to resign that position in April.

Parents had asked for Fortier’s resignation given that he no longer resides in Nunavut, a requirement for the school board president.

But Fortier, who has worked with the CSFN for over a decade, stayed on as a commissioner until this week.

Potvin said the school board will have decided at a public meeting May 20 whether to recruit a new commissioner right away or to finish the school year with a four-member council until the next election, scheduled for October.

The CSFN’s public consultation takes place May 21 at École des Trois-Soleils starting at 6:30 p.m.