Municipal police officers will have the right to remain silent and won’t be forced to submit reports during an investigation by Quebec’s police watchdog.
MONTREAL A new final word has come down over Bill 99, the twenty-year-old law meant to enshrine Quebec’s right to self-determination and, potentially, separation. But the appeal court ruling on Friday stepped away from allowing any present-day judge to give a final word at all, saying politics is too unpredictable. In short, Quebec Court of Appeal judge Robert Mainville wrote that Bill 99 is just fine unless it’s used in the future in some unforseeable way, such as unilaterally separating from Canada, in which case the courts of the future will need to deal with that for themselves. It s illegal under federal law for a province to unilaterally separate. What’s unclear is if Quebec will always respect that federal law.