Société des Acadiens et Acadiennes du Nouveau-Brunswick Inc v Canada
supreme Court of Canada case
Société des Acadiens et Acadiennes du Nouveau-Brunswick Inc v Canada, 2008 SCC 15 is a Canadian constitutional law case, dealing with the language standards imposed by section 20(2) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms on the Royal Canadian Mounted Police pursuant to their duties as New Brunswick's police force.
Background
In 1992, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) signed an agreement with the New Brunswick government whereby the RCMP would provide provincial policing services, pursuant to section 20 of the federal Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act (RCMPA) and section 2 of the New Brunswick Police Act.
In 2000, Marie-Claude Paulin was issued a speeding ticket near Woodstock by an RCMP officer who did not speak with her in French. Paulin sought a declaratory action affirming her right to receive service in French under section 20(2) of the Charter. The Société des Acadiens et Acadiennes du Nouveau-Brunswick (SAANB) joined Paulin's action in Federal Court. The RCMP argued that section 20(2) of the Charter did not apply to their institution because they were a federal institution, meaning that only the lesser section 20(1) Charter provision would apply.
The trial judge, Gauthier J, sided with Paulin and the SAANB, holding that providing New Brunswick's provincial policing services sufficed to make the RCMP a New Brunswick institution for the purpose of section 20(2) of the Charter.
The RCMP appealed to the Federal Court of Appeal. Richard CJ allowed the appeal, holding that the RCMP was not a New Brunswick institution, that the issue was primarily one of contract law, not constitutional law, and that the respondents should have brought the action against the province, not in Federal Court.
The case was appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 1, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q21189772. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2008, 1992 and 2000.
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This entry incorporates text from “Société des Acadiens et Acadiennes du Nouveau-Brunswick Inc v Canada” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.