Oct. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Quebec, Canada’s primarily French- speaking province, must change a law that governs how children qualify to attend English-language schools, Canada’s highest court ruled.

Quebec can’t disregard time that pupils spent at private English schools when determining whether they qualify to attend publicly funded institutions, according to the ruling released today in Ottawa.

Under Quebec law, parents can only send their kids to publicly funded English schools if they had attended English school or if their children received instruction in that language.

With its ruling, the Supreme Court may stir language tensions in the country’s second-largest province, where about 80 percent of the population is francophone. The province has implemented language laws to prevent French from losing its primacy.

“I am shocked and disappointed,” Christine Saint-Pierre, Quebec’s culture minister, told reporters in Quebec City. “We will take time to analyze the ruling.”

Some parents who didn’t qualify to have their children enrolled in publicly funded English-language schools got around the restrictions by briefly sending the kids to unsubsidized English schools, known as bridging schools. The province in 2002 changed the law to block the maneuver. The highest court said the law infringes on parents’ rights and is disproportional to the problem it aims to solve.

Crack in Protection

The Supreme Court “opened a crack in the protection of the French language,” Pauline Marois, leader of the Parti Quebecois, told the Quebec legislature today. The ruling will allow anyone to buy access to an English education for a few thousand dollars, she said.

Quebec must now rewrite its law and the education minister must review the cases involved individually, Judge Louis LeBel wrote for the seven-member panel.

“There will be some people in the English community who will say, this is a bad thing because it’ll inflame separatist passion,” Brent Tyler, the families’ lawyer, told reporters in Ottawa. “I would simply say that the dynamic of trading rights for unity is a dynamic that’s been operative in this country at the elite level for 30 or 40 years.”

‘Very Partial’ Victory

Families who sought to have the law struck down are disappointed, because the victory is “very partial,” even though the families “are happy the law was declared invalid,” Tyler said.

While only 25 families are involved in the case, the ruling may impact thousands of students in the province. More than 4,000 students were attending private English schools in Quebec in the 2007-08 school year, according to the ruling.

“We’re going to work with lawmakers to find a solution that reflects Quebec values,” Quebec Premier Jean Charest told the legislature. “That means first and foremost French primacy in Quebec society.”

In a separate case, a student won the right to attend public English school because a sibling already did and family unity must be preserved, the court said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Alexandre Deslongchamps in Ottawa at adeslongcham@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 22, 2009 15:57 EDT