Congratulations to the Quebec Federation of Home and School Associations, which is throwing the formidable influence of its 4,500 members behind the effort to protect the community from Bill 104 before the Supreme Court.

Bill 104, you’ll recall, is the 2002 law, introduced by a Parti Québécois government and passed unanimously through the National Assembly, which nailed shut a legal route into English schools for allophone or francophone children.

A trickle of families a year had been sending kids to fully-private English school for one year - as allowed by law - and then using that as justification for entry into English public or "private" (really semi-private) schools.

Last summer the Quebec Court of Appeal struck down Bill 104, saying it violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Within hours of the decision, the Liberal government, ignoring the interests of its faithful anglophone and allophone voters, announced its intention to appeal to the Supreme Court.

So now a constitutional right to English education must be defended by the Supreme Court, which is expected to agree to hear the case. The problem is that such a defence will be costly.

So it was useful, as well as courageous, for the Quebec Provincial Association of Teachers to contribute the sum of $20,000 toward the costs of the defence. And now the Home and School Federation is asking for fundraising help from its members.

Those members are the people, almost all mothers, who do so much to make our schools better through a whole range of extracurricular efforts, from breakfast programs to Christmas fairs.

It’s not easy to ask these devoted and energetic people to do even more. But since the Conservative federal government abolished the court-challenges program, which was started to support minority language rights, funding for defence of these rights is painfully hard to find.

We hope the Quebec English School Boards Association, and others, will also find ways to help support this important appeal.

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