A Quebec civil liberties group says it intends to press ahead with legal action after the Supreme Court of Canada responded to its translation demand by simply removing thousands of monolingual rulings from its website.

Quebec collective rights had gone to the Federal Court this month alleging that the clerk of the superior court (the court’s administrative body) was not respecting the Official Languages ​​Act.

This was because more than 6,000 rulings prior to the 1970 language legislation were published on the Supreme Court’s website in English only.

On Friday, the registrar announced it would remove all judgments before 1970 from the Supreme Court’s website, directing people to other online databases if they wanted to consult them.

The registrar also said it would begin translating the “most historically or jurisprudentially significant” decisions before 1970.

Droits Collectifs Québec says the registrar’s decision to remove the rulings does not resolve the issues they raised, so it will continue to seek a ruling from the Federal Court.

In September, official languages ​​commissioner Raymond Théberge ruled that any decision published on the court’s website must be available in both official languages.

He said the failure to translate sentences constituted an offense under the law and gave the high court 18 months to rectify the situation.

The Quebec group’s legal action refers to decisions issued between 1877 and the entry into force of the Official Languages ​​Act, which obliges federal institutions to publish content in English and French.

The Supreme Court has been translating all decisions issued since 1970, but has said that earlier rulings were primarily of historical interest and that the cost of translating them would be prohibitive.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.