Montfort is asking the court to overrule the cuts because they violate the rights of the francophone minority. But Montfort lawyer Ronald Caza rejected Holland's comparison. But the nearest francophone hospital to Ottawa's Montfort is the small Hearst hospital in northern Ontario. Ottawa's General Hospital, now part of the super Ottawa Hospital formed under the commission's orders, provides some services in French, but the designation procedure for French-language services at other hospitals has been far from successful, Caza said. For one thing, there is no legal backing to enforce a designation order.
Designation is an encouragement.
In court, he cited several recent Supreme Court decisions which he claimed show Ontario violated the principles of the constitution, and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, in denying that province's francophone minority its established full-service hospital. The top court ruled in August 1998 that it would be illegal for Quebec to secede unilaterally. Caza argued that the secession ruling adds language to the minority rights set out in Section 15 of the Charter. The francophone minority is not asking the court to create a French-language hospital where there is none, but rather to stop Ontario from taking away from the community a hospital begun 45 years ago, Caza said. The hospital is essential to our survival - we are invoking our constitutional rights.