Lost in translation

As the Law Society of Ontario considers eliminating the bar exam, a proposal that has already generated intense debate among members of the profession, one crucial voice remains largely absent: that of francophones. 

That absence is not accidental. It reflects a familiar pattern in which solutions are designed for anglophone problems and then applied wholesale to francophones, whose needs and realities differ in fundamental ways.

Approximately seven per cent of Law Society members identify as francophone, and not all of them provide services in French. This falls dramatically short of what is needed to serve the more than 600,000 francophones in the province, particularly those facing intersecting barriers. 

The consequences are real. 

French-speaking litigants face numerous obstacles and additional costs, and are often not informed of their language rights when they appear in court. These challenges are magnified before administrative tribunals, where many of the most vulnerable francophones appear, including tenants and victims of discrimination. Yet, there is no systematic collection or publication of French-language access data.

Despite these longstanding gaps, French-language issues have rarely been a focus in the Law Society's policy-making. This is not simply an oversight. It is an example of anglonormativity in action: the unexamined assumption that English is the default language of the legal profession in Ontario, despite the Courts of Justice Act declaring French an official language of the courts. 

It is worth noting that the Law Society retained the name "Upper Canada" until relatively recently. The previous name was widely perceived by French-speaking lawyers as a nod to Ontario’s historical predecessor, where the rights of francophones were limited and, at times, actively suppressed. 

On a personal note, as a francophone of Acadian descent, I was struck by echoes of the deportation of my ancestors (referred to as the Grand Dérangement) at a Law Society lunch about 10 years ago, when I was asked to raise a glass to the Queen. The moment crystallized just how invisible francophones and their issues remain at Osgoode Hall, where la langue de Molière is still rarely spoken and where anglonormative culture runs deep.

This anglonormativity has had concrete consequences. Past licensing reforms have had an adverse impact on French-speaking candidates. When the bar exam was introduced in its current form, candidates reported serious translation problems in the French exam and study materials. This led to higher failure rates among candidates who wrote in French, with devastating impacts on the careers of many francophone jurists. 

A few years later, when the Law Society launched the Law Practice Program, French was once again an afterthought. The Lincoln Alexander School of Law (then Ryerson) was chosen to design and run the LPP even though it had no capacity to offer it in French. 

Fortunately, the University of Ottawa’s French Common Law Program stepped up to offer the PPD in French. As the first director of the French LPP, I collaborated with a creative team of francophone jurists to develop and deliver a program that was truly responsive to the needs of the francophone community. I am deeply grateful to our volunteer advisory board of French-speaking lawyers, whose insight and guidance shaped every aspect of the program. Together, we pushed candidates to think creatively about serving francophones, especially those in the North and from marginalized communities who are most impacted by the access to justice crisis. 

For example, we ran a pop-up clinic in Sudbury with the local francophone legal clinic and partnered closely with l’Association des juristes d’expression française de l’Ontario on other initiatives aimed at promoting access to justice in French. In short, we made lemonade from the lemons given to us by the Law Society. But let’s be honest: the better path would have been to allow francophones to design their own alternative path to the profession from the outset, rather than forcing us to retrofit an English-language model that was never built for our community. 

In the current debate about the bar exam, the Law Society cites higher failure rates and increased complaints among internationally trained candidates as a rationale for reforming its licensing process. However, this is simply not an issue for the francophone community. There are no Canadian common law programs offered in French outside Canada. 

If the Law Society decides to reform or replace the bar exam, it must not adopt a solution tailored to an anglophone problem that does not exist in French. For Franco-Ontarians, the central issue is not entry-to-practice standards; it is access to justice in French, full stop. Any new licensing model must be designed for and with the francophone community, not done to it. It must also be developed in partnership with the francophone community, rather than being imposed upon it.

At a minimum, the Law Society must commit to collecting and publishing disaggregated data, including success and failure rates by the language of the licensing process. Without transparent data, inequities remain invisible and therefore persist. 

More broadly, reforming the bar exam without francophone participation risks repeating a familiar pattern of the past: solutions designed for anglophones bluntly applied to francophones. This leads to unmet needs and discrimination, particularly against French-speaking candidates who face intersecting barriers.

As Elsa Ascencio and Samantha Peters eloquently argued recently, a licensing process that has a disproportionately negative impact on marginalized students is contrary to human rights principles. It is also contrary to the public interest, particularly the interests of underserved communities, who benefit immensely from being represented in the legal profession and served by individuals with shared lived experience. 

Put simply, the Law Society cannot fulfill its duty to protect the public interest while sidelining any marginalized groups, including francophones.