A contentious, culturally sensitive legal battle over French-language education in the Yukon is headed to Canada's highest court.

The Supreme Court of Canada revealed today it will hear an appeal by the territory's francophone school board of a recent decision by the Yukon Court of Appeal.

The appeal court decision from last February in effect cancelled a previous judgment by the Yukon Supreme Court, which ruled in 2011 that the government violated minority language education rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The lower court ruling states that the government had "failed to accord the CSFY adequate management and control of French language education.”

This morning's announcement sends a multiyear, multimillion-dollar dispute between the territorial government and the Commission scolaire francophone du Yukon (CSFY) to the highest rung of the nation's legal ladder.

"I think it's a great day because these questions need to be dealt with by the Supreme Court,” CSFY head lawyer Roger Lepage said this morning. "They're questions obviously of national importance.”

"The CSFY is basically arguing for a full right to manage French education,” board president Ludovic Gouaillier told the Star earlier this year. "That's its mandate, and that's why it was created.”

Originally, the school board successfully argued that the government had breached its "fiduciary duty” by directing money earmarked for French-language education toward immersion programs — "second language instruction” — at English-speaking schools in Whitehorse rather than "first language” education at the exclusively French École Émilie-Tremblay.

The trial examined who had financial authority over things like professional development for teachers, programs for children under five years old and special needs students, and staffing and custodial budgets.

The trial judge found in favour of the CSFY and ordered a number of remedies, including $2 million in financial damages to make up for the diverted funds.

Justice Vital Oullette also ordered a new French high school built — within two years — alongside École Émilie-Tremblay.

Oullette demanded the school have the capacity for 150 students from Grades 7 to 12, even though French students in the territory number far fewer than that, a government lawyer argued.

The government, however, successfully appealed the decision, arguing that the judge was biased — a rare claim — among other problems.

Oullette, a former francophone school board trustee and local French association executive in Alberta, gave the appearance of bias when he grimaced and laughed at the government lawyer at various times in the proceedings, the appeal decision reads.

"Quite apart from issues of facial expressions or laughter, however, we are of the view that the judge treated counsel for the government with a lack of respect on many occasions during the trial,” the three-judge panel stated.

"The judge's comportment during the trial gives rise to a reasonable apprehension of bias.

"While his former connections to francophone education in Alberta do not raise concerns about bias, his continuing role as a governor of a foundation do,” the judges concluded, referring to Oullette's position at the Fondation franco-albertaine.

"We see it diametrically differently,” Lepage said.

"We're saying that the judge was very impartial ... in his approach.”

He also told the Star that French-speaking students in the Yukon need a francophone high school. "The numbers are expanding and there's no equivalency in educational infrastructure right now.”

Also at issue is whether the school board can receive services and communications in French from the government under the Yukon Languages Act.

Lepage said the case may well determine "the powers of the francophone school board to manage and reverse the errors of the past and the assimilation that has been taking place over the past 100 years.”

Only two cases of 20 recently under consideration for leave to the nation's highest court were granted a hearing.

"It's hard to get leave from the Supreme Court of Canada, so it comforts me that we'll have another argument to present, because I don't think that the Yukon Court of Appeal got this thing right, so we'll get a chance to correct it,” Lepage said.

Following years of expensive legal wrangling — the government has already spent $2.6 million on the case, according to the Department of Education — the appeal court ordered a retrial of the civil case after 23 months of deliberation.

That ruling is now on hold as it comes before the nine justices on the Supreme Court of Canada bench.

At stake in Yukon Francophone School Board v. Attorney General of the Yukon Territory is whether Oullette's conduct during the initial trial and his involvement with a provincial francophone association rendered him biased — or gave him a "reasonable apprehension of bias.”

The Supreme Court will also look at whether the Court of Appeal "erred in concluding that Yukon government had power to manage admission of non-rights holders to minority language schools,” according to a release posted on the court's website this morning.

The Court of Appeal focussed partly on whether the Charter grants the French school board — the Yukon's only school board — the right to admit children of "non-rights holder parents.”

Section 23 of the Charter stipulates that children born to a francophone parent or whose siblings were educated in French have the right to French language education in jurisdictions where English is the dominant tongue.

The appeal panel concluded children who don't fall under such conditions in the Yukon, like anglophones or new Canadians whose first language is neither English nor French, cannot attend Émilie-Tremblay.

Now that it has been granted permission to appeal the recent ruling, the school board along with Gouaillier hope the Supreme Court of Canada will go beyond the issues examined by the Court of Appeal to rule on the case as a whole, rather than sending it back to square one with a new trial — a lengthy and expensive process.

"Only this will allow CSFY to continue its quest to provide the members of the Yukon francophone community with educational services of a quality which conforms with the Article 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” Gouaillier said in a release earlier this year.

The Department of Justice did not return calls before the paper went to press this afternoon.