Jones v. Attorney General of New Brunswick

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jones v. New Brunswick (Attorney General) (1974), [1975] 2 S.C.R. 182 is a leading Supreme Court of Canada decision on the protection language rights in the Canadian Constitution. The Mayor of Moncton, Leonard Jones, challenged the federal Official Languages Act, which made both French and English the official languages of the institutions of the federal government, on the basis that the subject matter was outside the constitutional jurisdiction of the federal government. The Court upheld the Act, finding that the law was in relation to the administration of the Parliamentary institutions and therefore was within the authority of the federal government under the peace, order and good government power of the Constitution Act, 1867.

According to the Supreme Court in Société des Acadiens v. Association of Parents (1986), the notion that elected governments can enhance language rights, as set out in Jones, was constitutionalized in 1982 in section 16(3) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.^[1]