New Brunswick lieutenant-governor must be bilingual, Supreme Court rules

New Brunswick’s lieutenant-governor must be able to understand English and French and communicate in both languages while carrying out the office’s functions, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled.

In Société de l’Acadie du Nouveau-Brunswick v. Canada (Prime Minister), 2026 SCC 22, the majority held that appointing a unilingual person to the province’s vice-regal office infringes section 16(2) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That provision guarantees the equality of English and French in New Brunswick’s legislative and governmental institutions.

The June 12, 2026 decision establishes a constitutional requirement for this particular office, not a general rule that everyone working in a bilingual institution must speak both languages. It also expressly preserves the order appointing former lieutenant-governor Brenda Murphy and the acts she performed in office.

Chief Justice Richard Wagner wrote for six judges. Justice Malcolm Rowe, joined by Justices Andromache Karakatsanis and Mahmud Jamal, would have dismissed the appeal. Their disagreement concerned both the reach of the Charter’s language guarantees and the boundary between interpreting the Constitution and adding a qualification for public office.

From appointment challenge to constitutional declaration

Murphy was appointed on September 4, 2019, following the death of lieutenant-governor Jocelyne Roy-Vienneau. The Governor General in Council made the appointment on the prime minister’s recommendation under section 58 of the Constitution Act, 1867.

Murphy was not bilingual when appointed and did not become bilingual during her tenure despite efforts to do so. Her term ended on January 22, 2025. The judgment records that her successor, Louise Imbeault, was bilingual.

The court stressed that Murphy’s accomplishments and contributions to public life were not in dispute. The case concerned the language abilities constitutionally required for the office.

The Société de l’Acadie du Nouveau-Brunswick sought declarations under the Charter, cancellation of the prime minister’s recommendation and an order quashing the appointment. In 2022, the New Brunswick Court of Queen’s Bench found that the lieutenant-governor had to be personally bilingual, but declined to overturn the appointment because of the institutional consequences.

The New Brunswick Court of Appeal reversed that conclusion in 2024. Although it agreed the constitutional question could be decided by courts, it held that the Charter required bilingual institutions, not necessarily bilingual office-holders.

At the Supreme Court, the parties treated the case as a legal question about constitutional eligibility, reviewed for correctness. It was not litigated as an administrative-law challenge to whether the government had reasonably balanced Charter protections against the objectives of this particular appointment. That distinction ultimately limited the remedy.

Equality means more than access to bilingual services

The federal attorney general argued that the Charter’s obligations attach to the institution supporting the lieutenant-governor, rather than to the individual. An institution can provide services in both languages through its staff even if its head is unilingual. Section 58, meanwhile, contains no express language qualification.

The Société argued that this office is different: one person embodies the institution, so bilingual administrative services cannot by themselves secure the two languages’ constitutional equality.

The majority accepted that distinction. It held that section 16(2) is an enforceable guarantee in its own right, not merely a statement of purpose used to interpret the more specific language rights elsewhere in the Charter.

Those other provisions govern matters such as legislative proceedings, laws, courts and public services. They give concrete expression to language equality, the majority reasoned, but do not exhaust the broader guarantee. Constitutional protection does not become unenforceable merely because it is expressed in general terms rather than identifying every prohibited practice.

Wagner identified two dimensions of equality. The functional dimension concerns the ability to use either language and obtain services of equal quality. The symbolic dimension concerns each language’s recognized standing within the institution: neither can be treated as the principal language while the other is offered as a secondary accommodation.

That does not require perfectly symmetrical language use in every daily interaction. It requires institutions whose structure and public expression recognize both official languages equally.

The majority grounded this interpretation in New Brunswick’s history, including the deportation of Acadians and the exclusion of French from public institutions. The later statutory and constitutional recognition of language equality was intended to remedy that exclusion, protect minority communities against assimilation and support their participation in public life.

Section 16.1, added to the Charter in 1993, separately recognizes equality between New Brunswick’s English- and French-speaking communities, including rights to distinct educational and necessary cultural institutions. For the majority, it reinforced the purpose and symbolic significance of section 16(2). The court did not need to decide whether section 16.1 or the other provisions invoked independently required a bilingual lieutenant-governor.

Why this office is different

The decisive feature was not simply that the lieutenant-governor is an important public figure. It was the combination of a single office-holder, constitutional functions that cannot be delegated to staff and a distinctive role embodying the Crown in the province.

The lieutenant-governor personally performs functions such as summoning, proroguing and dissolving the legislature, granting royal assent, appointing the premier and ministers, and exercising exceptional reserve powers. The office also represents the state at ceremonies and public events.

Administrative support cannot substitute for the person who must perform those functions, the majority held. A lieutenant-governor unable to function in one official language necessarily affects that language’s representation by the institution itself. The consequences can be concrete: inability to understand the French portion of a throne speech or French-language legislation, or to interact in French at public events.

The required standard is functional bilingualism: the ability to understand and communicate in both languages while performing the role. The majority did not prescribe a particular examination or proficiency score.

It also rejected the argument that recognizing this requirement improperly amended the Constitution. Reading section 58 together with the Charter limits how the appointment power may be exercised without removing that power. Nor, in the majority’s view, does a language qualification alter the lieutenant-governor’s constitutional status, powers or functions so as to trigger the unanimous constitutional-amendment procedure protecting the office.

Dissent: institutional duties do not become personal qualifications

The three dissenting judges accepted the importance of substantive language equality and the historical injustices the guarantees were intended to remedy. They disagreed that those purposes authorized a personal bilingualism requirement.

Rowe read section 16(2) as introducing and guiding a scheme of institutional rights. On that interpretation, the relevant institution is the Office of the Lieutenant Governor, including its supporting organization, rather than the individual occupying the office.

The dissent did not equate equality with simply treating everyone identically. Institutions may need different or enhanced measures to deliver genuinely equal access and service quality. But those obligations arise through the Charter’s specific guarantees; section 16(2) supplies their interpretive standard rather than an additional, open-ended right.

For Rowe, a freestanding equality guarantee risked overriding the limits deliberately built into the language-rights scheme. He pointed to the parallel federal provision, section 16(1), and the geographically and functionally limited federal service rights in section 20(1). An unlimited residual right could allow claimants to bypass those express limits.

The dissent also addressed each of the Société’s alternative grounds:

• Community equality: Section 16.1 was adopted through a bilateral amendment involving Parliament and New Brunswick. The dissent concluded that it could not impose a new qualification for the lieutenant-governor’s office when amendments concerning that office require Parliament and all provinces to agree.
• Bilingual legislation: Section 18(2) requires legislation in both official languages with equal authority. It does not require every legislator—or the lieutenant-governor granting royal assent—to understand both versions. Section 17(2) also protects the choice of either language in legislative proceedings.
• Public communications and services: Section 20(2) guarantees access to an institution in either language, not a right to receive services from a particular person. Staff, translation or interpretation can fulfil institutional obligations, depending on the service and circumstances.

Rowe further warned that the majority’s reasoning could extend to premiers, ministers or federal office-holders with similarly prominent roles. A personal language qualification could then conflict with responsible government, under which the head of government must command the elected chamber’s confidence. He also questioned how courts would determine the language proficiency necessary to satisfy a broadly symbolic equality standard.

A binding requirement, but a limited remedy

The majority declined to extend its ruling to other offices. It distinguished the lieutenant-governor’s discretionary appointment under section 58 from the conventions and democratic processes governing the selection of premiers and ministers. It also stressed New Brunswick’s particular constitutional language regime rather than deciding the meaning of the parallel federal guarantee.

The relief was a declaration under section 24(1) of the Charter. An appointment order is a governmental act, the court explained, not a generally applicable law to be struck down as unconstitutional legislation.

Although the Société established a Charter infringement, it had neither argued nor established that the appointment reflected an unreasonable balancing of Charter protections and legitimate governmental objectives under the administrative-law framework associated with Doré v. Barreau du Québec. Quashing the order was therefore inappropriate in this proceeding.

A declaration instead clarifies the constitutional obligation while leaving authorities discretion over implementation and respecting the continuity of a constitutional institution.

The court allowed the appeal, set aside the Court of Appeal’s judgment and restored the trial judgment only in part. Its declaration is specifically that appointing a New Brunswick lieutenant-governor unable to understand both official languages and communicate in them while performing the office’s functions infringes section 16(2). Neither Murphy’s appointment order nor her official acts was invalidated.

The official Supreme Court docket records the appeal as closed on June 15, 2026. That administrative closure is separate from the June 12 judgment.