This means that while judges might benefit from interpreters during oral arguments, the case file in its entirety is NOT translated. Therefore, unilingual judges will often not be able to read the Appeal Court’s decision, the court’s transcripts and the facta of those who plead in the other official language. In practice, this means that francophone parties have file in facta in English if they want to be sure that all the judges will be able to read their arguments instead of having to rely on hearsay…

In a way, those who think that law clerks are exercising too much influence on the decision-making process at the Supreme Court should be all in favour of requiring bilingualism from the judges. Doing otherwise is to condemn the unilingual judges to having to rely on their bilingual clerks to know what is going on in a case.

The Chief Justice of a Court of Appeal or of Superior Court might be able to assign cases in a way that unilingual judges will only hear cases in their own language and that other cases will be heard by bilingual judges. However, at the Supreme Court, the Chief Justice does not have that “luxury”. There are cases of national importance that need to be addressed by a full bench and that means that when such a case has to be heard in French, all the judges should be able to understand the entirety of the case.

If some people feel uncomfortable ordering food from a menu that they do not understand, maybe they should think twice about having judges decide cases of national importance on the same basis…