The Official Languages Act : Loi sur les langues officielles : comprendre ses principes et son régime d'application

The Canadian Constitution does not contain any provisions relating to jurisdiction in matters of language. In a decision rendered in 1988, the Supreme Court of Canada affirmed that "language is not an independent matter of legislation but is rather 'ancillary' to the exercise of jurisdiction with respect to some class of subject matter assigned to Parliament or the provincial legislatures by the Constitution Act, 1867." The power to legislate in matters of language therefore belongs to both the federal and provincial levels of government, according to their respective legislative authority. The first Official Languages Act (OLA) was passed by the federal government in July 1969, in response to the work of the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. In 1982, the entrenchment of language rights in the Constitution opened a new chapter in the evolution of this issue. The OLA was revised in 1988 to take into account the new constitutional order. The new Act expanded the legislative basis for linguistic policies and programs adopted by the federal government. The OLA was revised again in November 2005 to clarify the duties of federal institutions with respect to enhancing the vitality of official language minority communities and promoting linguistic duality.