Section 18 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
Section 18 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is one of the provisions of the Constitution that addresses rights relating to Canada's two official languages, English and French. Like section 133 of the Constitution Act, 1867, section 18 requires that all statutes and other records made by the Parliament of Canada must be available in both official languages. Section 133 places a similar obligation on the legislature of Quebec, and this is reaffirmed by section 21 of the Charter. Section 18 of the Charter places a similar obligation on the legislature of New Brunswick. New Brunswick is the only officially bilingual province under section 16 of the Charter. Text Section 18 reads, Application Justice Michel Bastarache and fellow-authors wrote of section 18 that it repeats section 133 in necessitating Parliament's statutes being kept in both official languages, and that section 18 "adds that both versions are equally authoritative." They compared this clause to sections 56 and 57 of the Constitution Act, 1982, which state that English and French versions of the Constitution are equal. Earlier, however, court decisions suggested the equal status of English and French versions was implicit in section 133. Bastarache and his fellow-authors also argued