Resumen de Rebuilding Canada’s Bilingual Legislative Tradition: A Road Map Solidified by and for Legislators

Élizabeth Bergeron

• The clear and cohesive drafting of Canada’s laws is of crucial importance in the application of these laws in society. Each word, comma and expression influences the meaning of each law and how judges interpret the intention of the legislator. This process of interpreting laws sometimes creates a divide between the French and English versions in certain legal decisions. This ambiguity forces the judge to interpret the legislator’s intention and sometimes this process leads to the preference of one version over the other. This premise is the basis of this article, which aims to find the different causes of discrepancies between the English and French versions of federal legislation. More importantly, it aims to identify practical solutions, in collaboration with Members of Parliament and senators in order for these discrepancies to become less frequent. All in all, the guiding principles of this article are the respect of democracy and the separation of powers