Lawyer to Appeal Decision to Upholds Quebec’s Sign Law

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

Canada: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…
USA: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…

The Court of Quebec judge, Salvatore Mascia, has announced the decision in Bill 101 case on Wednesday morning to reject the bid to overturn Quebec’s signs law by a group of merchants prosecuted under Bill 101. The case involved 24 businesses prosecuted between 1998 and 2001 under the charter of the French language, which requires French to be markedly predominant on signs. The court heard the case in May, when charges against another 53 defendants were dropped.

According to the defense lawyer and long-time language activist, Brent Tyler, he will appeal to the ruling. Tyler stressed that “his is not the final word” and that had already “told my clients from the outset that they shouldn’t embark on this unless they view it like a baseball game. There are four bases. We’re just passing first base now. There’s second base, there’s third base and there’s home plate, which is the Supreme Court of Canada.”

Tyler had tried to convince the court that French is no longer a vulnerable langue in Quebec, thereby pointing out that the obligations placed by the French-language charter infringe on freedom of expression and cannot be justified. Despite rejecting his point of view, Mascia complimented Tyler for “a valiant effort.” In a 69-page decision, Judge Mascia stated that “in the present matter, the petitioners-defendants have not shown that the situation of the French language has changed significantly since the decisions of the Supreme Court in Ford and Devine.”