Human rights organizations and feminists rose to support a movement that forced all the men involved in the Charter drafting to back down. At the time, federal ministers Monique Bégin and Judy Erola led the charge.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on April 25, 2022.

OTTAWA—As the 40th anniversary of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was celebrated last week, much was written about the effect of the new law on Canada.

Some great ideas on Charter improvements, including multiple suggestions on how to tighten up the notwithstanding clause, open the door for a new constitutional debate.

But there were two elements of the Charter battle that got little attention.

The first was the role played by women politicians of all parties to save the equality clause in the Charter.

Back in 1982, I was the sole woman in the Opposition Ontario Liberal caucus. We were six women altogether representing three parties in the 125-seat assembly.

The fight for Charter equality was the first and only time that we all got together to strategize for a Charter change to fully protect women’s rights.

At the time of the initial Charter agreement, the rights of women, articulated in Sec. 28 of the agreement, were supposed to be subject to the Sec. 33 notwithstanding clause.

What that meant was that if any government wanted to ignore equality rights, all it had to do was invoke the charter to bypass women’s right to equal pay, right to access housing, healthcare, etc.

The charter of inequality had been signed by all first ministers except Quebec, so male politicians were loath to reopen with the document.

Women across the country were livid, and Canada witnessed a female political consensus the likes of which it has never experienced before or since.

Human rights organizations and feminists rose to support a movement that forced all the men involved in the Charter drafting to back down.

At the time, federal ministers Monique Bégin and Judy Erola led the charge. They reached out to female legislators across the country from all political parties, organizing a movement to force all parliaments to support a Charter amendment that would remove the notwithstanding clause from any oversight of women’s rights.

Bégin would later become beloved for her work in the creation of the Canada Health Act. Well-known as the mother of medicare, in 1984, Bégin implemented the legislative framework for hospital care across the country. That legislation secured universal access for all which has remained in place to this day.

Erola, the first female minister of mines, was equally capable, reaching out to legislators across party lines in an effort to secure women’s equality.

The pair organized a group of female politicians across the country, determined to amend the proposed Charter.

We were fighting an uphill battle.

Some premiers were adamant that there could be no changes to the initial document that had been agreed to by all provinces except Quebec.

Since any new change might prevent the Canadian Constitution from being repatriated from Westminster, the federal cabinet did not want to rock the boat.

The notwithstanding clause had already covered other groups, like francophone minorities outside Quebec, so there was a belief that any change, including full equality for women could cause the whole house of cards to collapse.

But the ferocity of women’s anger could not be ignored. Premiers across the country quickly backed down when they saw how women had united in favour of our equality.

The proposed Charter was amended and women’s rights were fully protected before the document was repatriated in April 1982.

The second element of the charter which received little attention but prompted huge social change was the section which proffered rights to all Canadians in both official languages.

Until the Charter was drawn up to protect minority linguistic rights, most francophones outside Quebec had little access to schooling in their language.

They were undereducated and poorly paid, making up the lowest earning group in the country.

As the Charter took hold, and provinces were forced by law to start offering minority language services, that situation turned around.

With robust French-language education available for francophones across the country, the level of education catapulted quickly.

Within twenty years, the poorly-paid, undereducated francophones became the best-educated, and most highly paid group in the country.

Unlike women’s rights, minority language rights were subject to the notwithstanding clause, causing Ottawa Liberal Member of Parliament Jean-Robert Gauthier to vote against the Charter repatriation.

Gauthier did not secure institutional bilingualism for all provinces, nor did the Charter enshrine French-language school boards and education. But the result of the Charter was that every province was eventually cajoled or sued into guaranteeing minority language rights in education.

Women and francophones were the real Charter winners.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on December 3, 2018.

OTTAWA—Premier Doug Ford’s French-language smack down has just begun.

And if he thinks his problem is going to go away any time soon, he does not understand the deep roots and the strength of the francophone community in Ontario.

The last time the provincial government moved to reduce services was when the government of Mike Harris vowed to shut down the only full-service francophone hospital in the province.

That decision spawned SOS Montfort, which is one of the legendary stories of survival in a community that had to fight tooth and nail for every right it achieved in the past century.

Ten thousand francophones and their supporters took to the streets of the nation’s capital, led by a diminutive dynamo Gisele Lalonde. Key organizers included the late Mauril Bélanger and journalist Michel Gratton.

Coincidentally, Gratton was also a close friend of prime minister Brian Mulroney who was a strong supporter of minority rights, having grown up as an anglophone in northern Quebec.

Most francophones thought we were past that. With Ontario Progressive Conservative Minister Caroline Mulroney as attorney general and minister of francophone affairs, observers were assuaged about the possibility of a potential attack on francophone rights.

The SOS Montfort movement also spawned a tightening up of the conditions where the Government of Canada sends transfers for minority language services to the provinces.

The federal government tops up the cost of minority language education and ancillary services through an agreement, known as the Canada-Ontario Agreement on Minority-Language Education and Second Official-Language Instruction, renewable every five years. The funding is based on the principle that offering services in a second language, including school board and curriculum development, is more expensive to deliver, based on economies of scale.

The theory behind the second-language action plan transfers is that the federal government assists in supporting development of minority language services vis-à-vis the action plan that is negotiated in the transfer package.

In some instances, that means expansion of the university system. The federal government has already announced its support for the south-western Ontario French language university, a project that has been in the making for more than two decades.

The other element that Premier Ford failed to understand in his hasty decision to cut French language services is that the francophone demographic has changed drastically since SOS Montfort.

The original supporters were primarily old-stock French Canadians, who fought for services even as their numbers dwindled as a result of intermarriage, decreasing birthrate and anglicization.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pictured with NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, Official Languages Minister Mélanie Joly, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer, and Green Party Leader Elizabeth May in his Centre Block office on Nov. 28, 2018, to discuss francophones in Ontario. Image courtesy of Twitter

That core has been buttressed in the last two decades by waves of immigrants from French-speaking countries who have made Ontario their home.

They live and work in French, and the Association des Canadiens Francais de l’Ontario has built strong links with the newcomer community.

ACFO has worked to integrate francophone newcomers into the support system of schools and hospitals, with the hope that dwindling local populations would be buttressed by an influx of immigrants.

Ford is now dealing with a monster of his own making. The francophone presence is felt in some 40 ridings across the province and they organized a Resistance rally in all of them Saturday to let the Conservatives know that they are hopping mad.

The only francophone in the Tory caucus, articulate, 29-year-old newcomer Amanda Simard, quit last week as a result of the cuts. That will put pressure on more to follow.

Ontario New Democratic Party Leader Andrea Horwath has mustered her troops to fight the decision and enlisted the support of her federal cousin NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, who is calling on the federal government to do more.

In that regard, Singh is right. Canada’s federal Minister Responsible for La Francophonie, Mélanie Joly, needs to send a clear message to Queen’s Park that this decision is not without financial consequences.

It is not just a question of prioritizing the university. The most egregious mistake by the new Ford government was the decision to eliminate the Office of the French Language Services Commissioner.

The position of commissioner sends an important signal, not only to government ministries but also to the whole province. If minority rights are not respected in the delivery of language services, there will be consequences.

Folding that office into the ambit of the ombudsman is an absolute slap in the face to those who have spend decades fighting for minority rights.

Joly and Prime Minister Justin Justin Trudeau need to let the premier know that cutting back on minority language services will cost him dearly, and not just at the polls.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

By SHEILA COPPS

First published on Monday, June 12, 2017 in The Hill Times.

OTTAWA—Former Progressive Conservative leader Robert Stanfield is called the best prime minister we never had.

Madeleine Meilleur could follow his lead as the best official languages commissioner we never had.

Meilleur was bullied out of the job last week simply because she recently stepped down as a member of the Liberal cabinet of Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne.

Former Conservative cabinet minister Lawrence Cannon went right from government to an ambassadorial position, as did former New Democratic Premier Gary Doer. Both nominees served with distinction, and were able to set aside their partisan histories in the interest of the country.

Meilleur, a respected francophone, would have been a fantastic official languages commissioner.

The commissioner’s job is not as high profile as that of ambassador, but it requires a devotion far beyond any diplomatic posting.

I was approached about the same appointment by prime minister Stephen Harper many years ago, when a mutual friend got in touch to test my interest.

I replied that I would rather stick pins in my eyes than assume responsibility for official language laws across the country. It is a tough job but somebody has to do it.

Most people understand the role of ambassador. Few Canadians have a clue as to what the official languages commissioner even does.

It involves devoting all your energy to fighting an uphill battle against federally-regulated bodies that regularly flaunt official bilingualism.

Meilleur is a diehard minority defender. She would definitely have put the survival of her people ahead of any political loyalty.

In her early life, Meilleur was an emergency room nurse, at the Montfort Hospital, Ottawa’s only uniquely French-speaking institution. She subsequently went on to study law, and her legal background stood her in good stead when she worked with the local community to save the Montfort from closure by the Ontario Health Services Restructuring Commission.

More than 10,000 supporters gathered to protest against the decision, in a movement called SOS Montfort. To this day, it remains one of the largest minority language rallies in the history of Canada.

During that time, Meilleur was a well-respected Ottawa city councillor, representing the largely francophone ward of Vanier. Vanier also happened to include some of the poorest postal codes in the country. Meilleur was their champion, as she served on the French Language Services Advisory Committee. She even received a United Way award as a community builder.

Throughout her career, she has been recognized as one of those politicians who is always more interested in public policy than in scoring political points.

When her candidacy for the official language commissioner post was reviewed by parliamentarians, even her most vocal opponents had only one reason to oppose her, that of political affiliation.

Had Meilleur not stepped aside, she would have been an excellent commissioner. In her 13 years in provincial politics, she was beloved by her constituents, being easily re-elected by increasing majorities.

While in cabinet, she was popular and respected. She was never associated with any whiff of controversy, and she piled up successful records in multiple ministries. Meilleur eventually rose to become Ontario’s first francophone attorney general.

By any standard, the 68-year-old former politician could have basked in her retirement freedom. But it was her passion for francophone advancement that lead her to apply for this challenging position.

The federal government will be hard pressed to find any replacement with the qualities and qualifications of Meilleur.

The biggest losers in this fiasco are anglophones in Quebec and francophones across the rest of the country who have lost an extremely effective defender of their rights.

From the establishment of French language education across the country, to the full provision of English language federal government services in Quebec, it is the role of the commissioner to help hold governments to account.

The former Harper Conservative government didn’t even bother to consider the importance of bilingualism when filling important judicial and governor in council positions.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, borne into a bilingual family, believes deeply in the need for minority language protection. Meilleur would have been a tour de force in making sure that reality was reflected across all government services.

Most commission work is focused on reviewing Crown corporations and government agencies that attempt to bypass official language laws. French language in Canada ‘s aviation system, and public service offerings in both languages are standard fare for complaint and examination.

Meilleur would have been an incredible commissioner. Her resignation is a huge loss, especially for minority communities in Canada.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.