Imagine inheriting a library of 6,000 old court decisions – handwritten, typed, and printed over nearly a century – and being told you owe up to $68.9 million to translate them because you scanned them and put them on a website. That was the argument before the Federal Court in Droits collectifs Québec v Office of the Registrar of the Supreme Court of Canada. The Court was not convinced.
In Droits collectifs Québec, the Federal Court (FC)dismissed an application by the advocacy group Droits collectifs Québec (DCQ) and its executive director, Etienne-Alexis Boucher. The applicants sought to compel the Office of the Registrar of the Supreme Court of Canada (ORSCC) to make available historical decisions rendered between 1877 and 1970 in both official languages on the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) website by retroactively applying the Official Languages Act (OLA). The ruling provides a detailed review of statutory interpretation and the limits of legislative retroactivity, while offering
