Section Twenty of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Section 20 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is one of the sections of the Constitution of Canada dealing with Canada's two official languages, English and French. Along with section 16, section 20 is one of the few sections under the title "Official Languages of Canada" that guarantees bilingualism outside Parliament, legislatures and courts. This also makes it more extensive than language rights in the Constitution Act, 1867. Section 20's specific function is to establish a right to English and French services from the governments of Canada and New Brunswick.

Section 20 reads:

(2) Any member of the public in New Brunswick has the right to communicate with, and to receive available services from, any office of an institution of the legislature or government of New Brunswick in English or French.

Section 20 applies to services from offices of Parliament and the government of Canada, including government departments and the bureaucracy. According to some judicial decisions, it also applies to services from police departments and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, although not all police officers need to be bilingual. The section's requirements are fully applicable to the main of these offices on the federal level. Section 20 limits its rights only when dealing with the lower-level offices, where there must be considerable interest for services in both languages, or if the offices are filling a function that one would expect should be carried out in both languages.

As section 20 applies to offices besides Parliament and the courts, it is more extensive than sections 17-22 of the Charter and language rights in section 133 of the Constitution Act, 1867. As far as the text is concerned, these rights are even more extensive in respect to the government of New Brunswick, where there are no requirements for considerable interest for the right to exist.

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