French Translation for Court Decisions: Here We Are!

On June 1^st, 2024, the legislative project of Bill 96 concerning the judgments of the Quebec courts will come into force.  As of June 1, all judgments that terminate proceedings or are in the public interest, if rendered in English, must be accompanied, without delay, by a French translation of the judgment.

Bill 96¹, passed on June 1^st, 2022, aims to further promote the use of the French language and reaffirm the formal recognition of French as the only official language in Quebec. In this spirit, several provisions have come into force, at different times since June 2022, all of which are intended to strengthening the use of French in the Quebec judicial system and procedures.

It should be remembered that this text has had important implications, particularly for divided co-ownerships². Indeed, since the adoption of this bill in June 2022, declarations of co-ownership and amendments thereto must be drawn up and published in French. The same applies to all other contracts in divided co-ownership and, in particular, to the documents of the register of co-ownership, such as the by-laws of immovable, the minutes of the meetings of the co-owners or the minutes of the meetings of the board of directors³.

As for judgments, they must now be delivered in French or accompanied by a translation into French. This is likely to delay the availability of these judgments as the translation must be available without delay. The courts will be responsible for these translations and will bear the costs. However, the courts’ resources for translation are limited and it will be difficult to cope with the increase in requests, which will have the direct effect of delaying the delivery of judgments.

It is true that as of September 1^st, 2022, the requirement that all land registry registration requisitions must be in French has already provided a foretaste of the challenges of  translating all documents that must or can be published in the land registry⁴.

A judge of the Court of Quebec has already warned of this upcoming problem for the judgments to be rendered⁵. One thing is certain, Bill 96 and the coming into force of this new provision have not stopped making noise.