Francophone Association angry MLAs killed Bill 1

The Iqaluit-based Francophone Association of Nunavut described the legislative assembly’s decision to kill Bill 1, the proposed education act, “totally unacceptable” in a news release issued late last week.

“Abandoning Bill 1 means maintaining the status quo: this is totally unacceptable,” said Paul Landry, president of the association.

“Maintaining the status quo means that we keep living with an Education Act inherited from the NWT. An act that is unconstitutional. An act that does not meet the expectations of Nunavummiut.”

Last fall, the association contracted the services of Iqaluit lawyer Paul Crowley and declared its intention to take the government to court if it didn’t bring the bill into compliance with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

As a result, the Nunavut government formed a working group made up of representatives from the association, the French district education authority and the departments of education and justice.

This past February, the association and the GN signed a joint submission to the standing committee proposing a series of amendments to the bill.

“These amendments represented a major step in the right direction,” the news release says. “While they do not, on their own, ensure that the legislation is up to the standards set out in the Charter, the AFN was hopeful that the working group would develop regulations that would ensure that the complete legislative package, the legislation and the regulations, would meet the constitutional requirements.”

The association believes that only half the work is done, and that the French DEA was premature in calling the bill unconstitutional in a story published in Nunatsiaq News on March 21.

“We were quite confident, based on the cooperation that had been cultivated, that a satisfactory legislative package would have been developed,” Landry said. “We will go to court to defend our rights if we have to but it is never the preferred road.”