The July 29, 2025, announcement from the court’s registry states that before 1970, “the court usually rendered its decisions in the language in which they were argued, some in French, some in English, and others in both languages. At that time, the Office of the Registrar was not legally required to publish them in both official languages.”
However, last November, the Droits collectifs Québec (DCQ) sued the Supreme Court of Canada’s Registrar in Federal Court for not translating the court’s untranslated decisions between 1877 and 1970 into French. The group, which said it exists to protect Quebecers’ constitutional and language rights, argued that the Supreme Court’s failure to translate the previously posted decisions violates the OLA and that the court’s removal of the untranslated judgments from its website last November further infringed linguistic rights.
The top court’s July 29 press release states that the office of Supreme Court Registrar Chantal Carbonneau is translating some important pre-1970 judgments, starting with the famous part-English/part-French legal landmark, Roncarelli v. Duplessis, [1959] S.C.R. 12.
Supreme Court of Canada Chief Justice Richard Wagner
The translation of Roncarelli v. Duplessis is expected to be available in both French and English on the court’s website in the fall, the Supreme Court’s registry states. “The others will follow as they are completed to provide Canadians the opportunity to explore significant developments in Canada’s legal history. These translations will however not be official, as the judges who originally decided these cases are now deceased and cannot approve them.”
The top court’s registry said that it is undertaking the translation of some of its most significant pre-1970 decisions “on the occasion of the Supreme Court of Canada’s 150th anniversary in 2025, which commemorates its history and legacy in upholding the rule of law, building public trust and serving our community.”
At the same time, the court unveiled the names of 24 judgments chosen for priority translation in a June 6, 2025, report from an expert panel of seven jurists, co-chaired by former Supreme Court judges Marshall Rothstein and Clément Gascon.
The Supreme Court tasked the committee with identifying “around 20” of the 6,000 untranslated pre-1970 decisions “that are the most jurisprudentially relevant to the development of modern law.”
In coming up with two dozen names (see below), the committee used various sources, including quantitative citation data generated by CanLII’s legal databases.
CanLII identified the pre-1970 decisions seen as having the highest precedential value, as indicated by the top 100 decisions cited most often by each of the Supreme Court itself, appellate and lower courts and administrative decision-makers.
CanLII also provided a list of the top 100 most popular decisions consulted by members of the public on the Supreme Court’s website from 2012 to 2024.
The committee also examined, as indicative of decisions relevant to contemporary legal debates before the Supreme Court, the top 100 pre-1970 cases cited by lawyers in their Supreme Court facta between 2009 and 2024. (These were identified by University of New Brunswick law professor Paul Warchuk, based on data he compiled for his article last December, “Do pre-1970 precedents still matter? An empirical analysis of legal submissions and court decisions.”)
The results from the tables were incorporated into a consolidated table of 373 cases (six per cent of all untranslated pre-1970s decisions), with those appearing most often across the various tables ultimately making it into the final list of 24.
The committee also obtained survey responses from 25 law professors asked to identify significant pre-1970 Supreme Court decisions that remain relevant in legal education and for law students.
Committee members also conducted a qualitative analysis of the identified cases in order to confirm that the cases it was recommending for priority translation remain relevant.
“At the core of our reasoning was the need to consider the diverse audiences who read, analyze, apply and quote SCC decisions,” concludes the committee’s 13-page report, signed by the two ex-Supreme Court judges, as well as by Teresa Donnelly, president of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada; Catherine Claveau, former Bâtonnière du Québec; UOttawa president and former civil law dean Marie-Ève Sylvestre; Yan Campagnolo, vice-dean of the UOttawa common law program; and Francis Barragan, CanLII’s president and CEO.
Of the 24 cases the committee flagged for priority translation, 71 per cent were written in English only and 29 per cent were written partly in English and partly in French. None were written only in French.
Sixty-three per cent of the selected pre-1970 judgments involved public law (constitutional, administrative, municipal or tax law); 18.5 per cent involved private law (contracts, torts and extra-contractual liability); and 18.5 per cent involved criminal law.
When Chief Justice Wagner was asked at his annual news conference in 2024 about allegations that the Supreme Court is not complying with its Official Languages Act obligations — an issue that has attracted considerable media attention in Quebec and from francophone communities outside Quebec — he explained that “in our view, we were not required to translate the decisions before 1970 because they were not considered communications to the public — they were considered legal decisions.”
He indicated his court examined, in good faith, what it would take to translate the thousands of pre-1970 untranslated decisions.
“It would take roughly 100 translators working on this, and it would cost between $10 and $20 million,” he estimated. “That’s not the kind of funding we have (translation).”
He added that although the pre-1970 decisions are part of Canada’s legal heritage, they have limited current precedential value given the vast changes in the legal landscape since the Charter went into effect in 1982.
Raymond Théberge, Commissioner of Official Languages for Canada
Théberge also remarked that the apex court has been “exemplary” among federal courts in simultaneously publishing all its decisions in both official languages since 1970. He acknowledged as well “the difficulties experienced by the Supreme Court” in rendering accessible to the public, in both official languages, the court’s historical decisions.
The action by the Droits collectifs Québec against the Office of the Registrar of the Supreme Court of Canada claimed $1 million in damages, and a formal apology to citizens and francophone communities for having violated their language rights and access to justice by failing to make all the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence available in French. The group asked the Federal Court for an order that the top court start “official” translations within a year of the Federal Court’s judgment — and that the defendant complete such translation of all pre-1970 English-only decisions within three years — with priority to be given to the most often cited or referenced unilingual decisions.
At press time, the DCQ had not yet responded to Law360 Canada’s request for an update on its novel lawsuit.
Below are the 24 English-only and part-English/part-French judgments recommended for priority translation by the Supreme Court’s external selection committee, which also provided helpful brief explanations of each decision’s precedential significance:
Reference re Alberta Statutes, [1938] S.C.R. 100
Saumur v. City of Quebec, [1953] 2 S.C.R. 299
Boucher v. The Queen, [1955] S.C.R. 16
Roncarelli v. Duplessis, [1959] S.C.R. 121
Reference re Validity of Section 5 (a) Dairy Industry Act, [1949] S.C.R. 1
Switzman v. Elbling and A.G. of Quebec, [1957] S.C.R. 285
Reference re: Industrial Relations and Disputes Investigation Act (Canada), [1955] S.C.R. 529
Beaver v. The Queen, [1957] S.C.R. 531
Spooner Oils Ltd. v. Turner Valley Gas Conservation, [1933] S.C.R. 629
Thomson v. Minister of National Revenue, [1946] S.C.R. 209
White v. The King, [1947] S.C.R. 268
Johannesson v. Municipality of West St. Paul, [1952] 1 S.C.R. 292
Alliance des professeurs catholiques de Montréal v. Quebec Labour Relations Board, [1953] 2 S.C.R. 140
O’Grady v. Sparling, [1960] S.C.R. 804
Valin v. Langlois, (1879) 3 S.C.R. 1
In re Provincial Fisheries, (1896) 26 S.C.R. 444
Raymond v. Township of Bosanquet, (1919) 59 S.C.R. 452
Johnston v. Minister of National Revenue, [1948] S.C.R. 486
Attorney General of Nova Scotia v. Attorney General of Canada, [1951] S.C.R. 31
Wilson v. Swanson, [1956] S.C.R. 804
Colpits v. The Queen, [1965] S.C.R. 739
Boudreau v. The King, [1949] S.C.R. 262
Re the Farm Products Marketing Act, [1957] S.C.R. 198
Saint John Tug Boat Co. Ltd. v. Irving Refining Ltd., [1964] S.C.R. 614
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