Background
Canada is an officially bilingual country, where language rights play a prominent role in the constitutional order and national identity. Legal norms governing the status of official and Indigenous languages have recently undergone major reform at the federal level, as well as in some provinces and territories. For example, in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Call to Action 14, Parliament passed the Indigenous Languages Act in 2019. Ontario improved its French Language Services Act in 2021. In 2022, Quebec made major changes to its Charter of the French language (Bill 96). New Brunswick and the Northwest Territories are currently reviewing their official languages legislation. In 2023, the Parliament of Canada modernized its Official Languages Act for the first time in 25 years, and this reform was based on a new paradigm of substantive and asymmetrical equality of English and French. Also during this period, the Supreme Court of Canada and Canadian courts have heard multiple high-profile cases concerning issues such as constitutional rights to minority-language education and federal appointments of unilingual vice-regal representatives.
This special issue of the OLR is an opportunity to take stock of this lively activity in language policies, rights, and obligations in Canada, and to assess its implications for the future of a country that is bilingual, multicultural, and committed to reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.
Proposals
Interested individuals are encouraged to submit a 300-word proposal on language rights, focusing inter alia on one of the following themes:
- The implementation of language rights under the Constitution Act, 1867, the Manitoba Act, 1870, the Constitution Act, 1982, and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms;
- Recent amendments to federal, provincial, and territorial legislation and their impact on language rights in various Canadian jurisdictions;
- Recent decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada and provincial courts concerning language issues;
- Legal and social issues related to language rights in the areas of justice, government services, immigration, and minority-language education from early childhood to postsecondary education;
- Legislation and initiatives aimed at reclaiming, revitalizing, preserving, and transmitting Indigenous languages;
- Intersectionality and the role of language in the diverse individual and collective identities in Canada; and
- The theoretical and philosophical underpinnings of Canada’s various regimes of language rights and obligations.
Proposals should be sent to the attention of professors Larocque and Campagnolo to [email protected] by November 15, 2023. Authors whose proposals are selected will then be asked to submit an article of up to 10,000 words for publication in the special issue of the OLR. A conference will take place after the issue is published.
About the OLR
The OLR is a bilingual, peer-reviewed academic journal published twice annually by the students of the Common Law Section of the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa, with the support
of professors Yan Campagnolo and Kyle Kirkup.
Since its founding in 1966, the OLR has contributed to the advancement of legal research and thinking through the publication of high-quality articles, case comments, and book reviews on current and relevant legal issues, written by judges, practitioners, and professors. Articles published by the OLR have been frequently cited, including by the Supreme Court of Canada.
As a general-interest journal, the OLR seeks academic articles and other writing that contributes to the diversity of views in all areas of law, including those with an international, theoretical, or
comparative perspective. The OLR is entirely open access, and our authors are free to publish their articles on a personal website or on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN).