Making Rights Meaningful: Language Access as a Civil Right in Canada

Canada’s legal framework recognizes the centrality of language. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms enshrines English and French as official languages (sections 16–22) and guarantees minority-language education rights (section 23). The Charter’s equality clause (section 15) affirms equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and has grounded a jurisprudence of substantive equality—one that requires accommodating difference to achieve genuine equality. From this perspective, language access is a necessary accommodation for people who cannot effectively communicate in the dominant language in a given setting.

Without language access, core civil rights are compromised. In health care, patients who cannot fluently communicate symptoms, understand diagnoses, or sign informed consent face serious risks. The Canadian Paediatric Society (Hui, C. (2023) reports that professional interpretation improves clinical communication, reduces errors, and enhances patient satisfaction; conversely, relying on untrained interpreters or family members is associated with higher error rates and worse outcomes, especially for children. In legal and administrative settings, language barriers can lead to wrongful convictions, unfair hearings, and loss of benefits. Ensuring interpretation and translation in these contexts is essential to upholding due process and fairness.

Examples of viewing language access as a civil right in Canada include federal initiatives on access to justice and recent Government of Canada funding to support legal services in both English and French, explicitly linking language access to civil rights. The 2022 Canadian Survey on Disability also reports that nearly half of Canadians with disabilities encounter communication-related barriers, which often intersect with language access issues in public services. In a country defined by linguistic duality, Indigenous languages, and sustained immigration, the ability to understand and be understood has shifted from a convenience to a prerequisite for justice—making legal rights meaningful in practice. Treating language access as a civil right therefore aligns with Canada’s constitutional values, human rights framework, and commitment to substantive equality.

Finally, language access is deeply connected to human dignity—a foundational principle in Canadian human rights law. Provincial and federal human rights codes prohibit discrimination in services, employment, and housing on grounds such as race, ethnic origin, and place of origin, which often intersect with language. When people are denied services because they cannot speak a particular language, the result is adverse-effect (indirect) discrimination: marginalization and exclusion based on how they communicate. Ensuring language access affirms dignity by making rights genuinely usable for everyone, not only for those fluent in the dominant language.

Canada’s demographic reality further strengthens this claim. Nearly one in four residents is an immigrant, and millions have a mother tongue other than English or French. Indigenous peoples also hold inherent linguistic rights tied to culture, identity, and self‑determination. For Indigenous communities, language access is not simply a service issue; it is part of repairing historical harms, including policies that intentionally suppressed Indigenous languages. Framing language access as a civil right therefore supports reconciliation and aligns with Canada’s commitments under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Indigenous Languages Act, making rights meaningful for everyone—not only for those fluent in a dominant language.

Critics sometimes claim that language access is too costly and administratively burdensome which overlooks both legal obligations and measurable benefits. The upfront expense of professional interpretation and translation is modest compared with the downstream costs of miscommunication: preventable emergency visits, hospital readmissions, medication errors, delayed discharges, appeals and retrials in the justice system, and wrongful decisions in child protection or benefits administration. Investing in language access as proactive intervention of reducing errors, improving efficiencies, and avoiding litigation and remediation costs delivers net savings alongside better outcomes. From a public policy standpoint, language access is not only a rights-based requirement grounded in Canada’s human rights commitments but also a prudent, cost-effective strategy to strengthens service quality and accountability across all service systems.

Ultimately, language access is about fairness and dignity. A just society does not require people to shed their language to exercise their rights; it ensures that communication bridges the gap between law and lived experience. When governments and institutions provide interpretation and translation, they operationalize substantive equality—affirming that rights belong to people as they are, not only to those fluent in a dominant language.

A number of recent studies and policy analysis supports the Civil Rights Argument for language rights collectively showing that:

1. Language barriers cause measurable harm such as poorer health outcomes, miscommunication, and reduced access to services.

2. Professional interpretation improves outcomes and reduces inequities in public systems like health care.

3. Current service delivery in Canada is inconsistent, lacking enforceable national standards.

4. Official language minority groups still face barriers even within the framework of existing official language rights.

5. Government policy efforts recognize access to language as part of access to justice, reinforcing civil-rights framing.

Join us on February 23rd for (free, online) discussion on Language Access as a Civil Right: Advocacy Across North America - Equity, Policy, and Power

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• Hui, C. (2024). Access to appropriate interpretation is essential for the health of children (Position Statement). Paediatrics & Child Health, 29(1), 43–45. https://doi.org/10.1093/pch/pxad054. This Canadian Paediatric Society position statement documents how professional interpretation improves clinical communication and outcomes, while untrained interpretation creates errors and risks.

• Jones, C., & colleagues. (2019). Impact of Language Barriers on Quality of Care and Patient Safety for Official Language Minority Francophones in Canada. Journal of Health Services Research & Policy. This multiple-method study shows that language barriers contribute to poorer assessment, misdiagnosis, delayed treatment, and lower confidence in health services for Francophone minorities.

• Author(s). (2025). Training and usage of language interpretation services among health care providers in a large Canadian pediatric centre. Paediatrics & Child Health, 30(3), 176–183. This recent study (Edmonton) found that many clinicians encounter language preference patients weekly but lack formal training in using interpretation services.

• Vissandjée, B., et al. (2020). Access to healthcare for immigrant children in Canada: Challenges and barriers. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(9), Article 3320. This research highlights language as a dominant barrier to accessing health services for immigrant populations in Canada.

• Statistics Canada (2011). Linguistic Characteristics of Canadians (Census). This census data shows that a significant share of Canadians report a mother tongue other than English or French. (Referenced within Hui, 2024).