Federal Court rejects historic Supreme Court translation bid; appeal pending

The Federal Court has rejected a bid to force the translation of thousands of historical Supreme Court of Canada judgments, ruling that putting the old decisions online did not create a new translation duty under the Official Languages Act. The decision is now under appeal.

In Droits collectifs Québec v Office of the Registrar of the Supreme Court of Canada, 2026 FC 706, released June 2, 2026, Deputy Judge Denise A. LeBlanc dismissed the application without costs. She held that the Act’s specific rules for court judgments, rather than its general rules for government communications and services, governed the historical decisions.

The court did not order the judgments translated or restored to the Supreme Court’s website. Nor did it award the $1 million in damages sought by Droits collectifs Québec and its executive director, Etienne-Alexis Boucher.

A dispute over access to legal history

The case concerned roughly 6,000 decisions dating from before the Supreme Court was required to make its judgments available in both official languages. The reasons describe the collection as the Court’s pre-1970 decisions. Those older judgments had generally been issued in the language of the hearing or the judge writing the reasons.

Boucher told the court that he needed historical judgments to examine the development of the law and comment on policies affecting collective, language and constitutional rights. The applicants did not challenge the paper judgments in the archives or the Supreme Court Reports. They argued that reproducing the texts online was a later administrative act that had to comply with current bilingual-service obligations.

The Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages had supported translation in investigations concerning the online collection. After the court application was filed, the Registrar’s office removed the historical decisions from the Supreme Court website in November 2024. The Registrar’s evidence was that the texts had been de-indexed, not destroyed, as a precaution while the language-obligations dispute continued.

By the hearing, the applicants had withdrawn their request for a public apology and extended their proposed translation deadline from three years to ten. Their damages demand remained.

Why the Commissioner’s conclusions did not decide the case

The application was brought under section 77 of the Official Languages Act. The judge explained that this procedure required the court to decide the complaint afresh, not simply review whether the Commissioner’s report was reasonable. The reports were admissible evidence but did not bind the court.

The distinction between two parts of the Act was decisive. Part III deals specifically with the administration of justice, including the language in which federal court decisions must be made available. Part IV deals more generally with communications and services to the public. Section 77 does not provide a remedy for a breach of Part III.

The applicants relied on Part IV. They said moving a judgment from paper to a website created a distinct communication, even if the words of the judgment remained unchanged. The Registrar’s office argued that section 20 in Part III was the governing provision and that the legislation did not impose translation obligations retrospectively on historical judgments.

Specific judgment rules prevailed

LeBlanc accepted the Registrar’s interpretation. She applied three principles: specific statutory provisions take priority over general ones; provisions should work coherently together; and legislation ordinarily does not operate retroactively without a clear legislative direction.

Applying Part IV to judgments would conflict with section 20’s own exceptions, including circumstances in which one language version may follow the other and the ability to deliver a decision orally in one language. The applicants’ approach could impose a more demanding obligation on old judgments than on newer ones, the judge reasoned.

Nothing in the Act displaced the presumption against retroactivity for this historical collection. The judge also rejected the idea that changing the medium alone created a new or altered judgment. There was no evidence that the online texts had been substantively changed; adding tracking hyperlinks did not change their content.

Making judgments accessible was an extension of the judicial function, reflecting open justice and the preservation of court records, rather than an independent administrative initiative by the Registrar. The judge also concluded that merely posting the historical texts, without an opportunity for exchange, was not communication within Part IV in this context.

No official-translation order or destruction finding

The applicants wanted translations carrying official status. The court found no authority to require the Supreme Court to change its process for approving translations or to declare new translations official. The Registrar had explained that judges approve translations of their reasons, a process that could not be replicated with the deceased authors of the historical decisions.

The court also rejected the allegation that removing the online texts amounted to destruction of evidence. The unchallenged evidence was that no judgments had been destroyed, and the Registrar’s office had not argued that removal made the litigation moot.

Translation costs were not the legal basis for the dismissal. The judge expressly noted that the Registrar had raised them in connection with possible damages, not as justification for its position on the Act. Having found no breach, she declined to make a provisional damages assessment.

An appeal remains unresolved

The official court-file record shows a notice of appeal filed on August 28, 2026, in Federal Court of Appeal file A-318-26, challenging the June 2 judgment. The latest recorded entry available when checked on October 23 was a September 28 agreement concerning the appeal book; no appellate disposition was shown.

The ruling therefore explains the Federal Court’s interpretation, not the outcome of that appeal. It concerns the statutory treatment of historical court judgments, not a general exemption from bilingual obligations for government websites. A separate Supreme Court initiative, announced in July 2025, had begun translating selected significant historical decisions; this judgment did not require translation of the entire collection.