Tribunal hears English school access case

BY ANDY BLATCHFORD

andy.blatchford@transcontinental.ca

Mohammad Asghar Khan’s drive to gain access to English education for his three boys was presented before a Quebec tribunal last month.

Dollard des Ormeaux teenagers Farokh, Usman and Irfan were denied admission to English-language instruction last fall by Quebec’s Ministry of Education.

Khan, now a Canadian citizen, said his sons meet the criteria outlined in paragraph 73(2) of Quebec’s Charter of the French Language. The charter states children of Canadian citizens, who received a majority of their instruction in English (in Canada), are not bound to attend French school.

But the province ruled against them, citing the 2005 Supreme Court of Canada Solski v. Quebec decision.

As Khan’s battle proceeds, two of his teenage boys, Farokh, 17, and Usman, 15, have been sharing an apartment in Cornwall, Ont., where they have been studying at an English school.

Meanwhile, the youngest brother, Irfan, has been studying at a French school in the West Island.

For the last few months, Khan has picked his boys up every Friday evening in Cornwall to drive them back to Dollard where they spend the weekend with their family. “They really had no choice,” the family’s lawyer Brent Tyler said of registering at the Ontario school.

Two weeks ago, the Khans pleaded their case before the Tribunal administratif du Québec.

Tyler said the tribunal has until Aug. 23 to render a decision. If the Khans are denied they will have the option to move the case to the next level, he added.

But for a man who works at a plastics factory, the price may be too high. “How is the Khan family, with its meagre resources, going to go up against the government of Quebec?” Tyler said.

He said last fall’s elimination of the federal court challenges program — designed to help groups challenge government decisions they say have violated their rights — has left a financial impact on the family. “A case like the Khans’ would have been a perfect case for the program,” Tyler said. “The Charter of Rights isn’t worth the paper it’s written on if people do not have practical access to the court system.”

He also decried the Lester B. Pearson School Board’s lack of involvement in the case.

Pearson, which Tyler said receives $5,000 from Quebec for each student, should have made strong public statements in support of the Khans. “Instead, the English school boards, in general, have been woefully negligent in their obligations to push access issues,” he said, adding francophone school boards have been successful in taking part in court cases and voicing their stance in a cordial fashion. “In Quebec, the English school boards are so timid they’re afraid of their own shadow.”

When Khan’s family immigrated to Montreal from Pakistan in 2002, the brothers had only studied in Urdu and English. French was a foreign language to them.

In the first year, the boys say they struggled through French instruction.

In 2003, Khan received a job offer in Cornwall and moved the family. The children studied in English for three years.

The family moved to Dollard last year, so the boys’ mother, Shehida Tasnin, could be closer to a specialized doctor not available in the Ontario city.?