Citing the need for full control over its education system, the territory's French-language school board has launched a lawsuit against the territorial Department of Education.

"This court action is the latest step in a long process of dealings," commission scolaire francophone du Yukon president AndrE Bourcier told a news conference Wednesday.

"Several years of negotiations between the CSFY (school board) and the Yukon Department of Education have not led to significant developments regarding full school governance by the CSFY.

"Therefore, the CSFY has chosen to appeal to the court to obtain a decision and move the case forward."

The news conference was held in the library of Ecole Emilie-Tremblay, the only French first-language school (kindergarten to Grade 12) in the territory. It took place 90 minutes after the 29-page lawsuit was filed in Yukon Supreme Court.

The Granger-Logan area school is funded to the tune of $4.5 million annually, with more than 100 students attending.

However, Bourcier said it's not enough to offer francophone students the same quality of education their anglophone counterparts can receive at other high schools in Whitehorse.

"The best example of what's going on right now is our high school. We're supposed to have a full high school. If you look around at this library, for example, it doesn't really feel like a high school library," Bourcier said, adding the school was constructed mainly as a primary school.

Though Ecole Emilie-Tremblay has seen success in recent years with its experiential program aimed at its high school students, it's impossible to offer programs in things like the trades, he said.

The school needs to be able to offer the same quality of education students can receive at F.H. Collins or Porter Creek secondary schools, he argued.

"This is an unacceptable situation."

Despite just 23 high school students attending the French-language high school, Bourcier wouldn't rule out the possibility of a separate building for those in Grades 8 to 12.

"What you have to understand is that to be able to have students, we have to offer services," he said.

Many students end up leaving Ecole Emilie-Tremblay when they start Grade 8 in favour of the two other high schools in the city that can offer the education they're looking for.

"If we cannot offer services, the students will not come to this school. It's chicken-and-egg," Bourcier said.

The high school alone could have more than 100 students if all those in the primary levels continued through to graduation, he said.

"We need the means to be able to offer these services so we can keep our children within our system," Bourcier said.

Parents are often torn between their students staying with the French first language education and having them being able to access the programs at the other two high schools in town.

"We're not asking for more than anybody else," he said. "We are asking for our share according to the Charter (of Rights and Freedoms), according to the Education (Act)."

He continued to argue the school and school board exist because of the Charter, which recognizes the right to linguistic minorities to get an education in their own language.

"Section 23 of the Charter also recognizes that these communities have the right to manage their education system. These rights go hand-in-hand, and one cannot exist without the other," he said.

The Charter section reads:

"23. (1) Citizens of Canada

a) whose first language learned and still understood is that of the English or French linguistic minority population of the province in which they reside, or

b) who have received their primary school instruction in Canada in English or French and reside in a province where the language in which they received that instruction is the language of the English or French linguistic minority population of the province,have the right to have their children receive primary and secondary school instruction in that language in that province.

(2) Citizens of Canada of whom any child has received or is receiving primary or secondary school instruction in English or French in Canada, have the right to have all their children receive primary and secondary school instruction in the same language.

(3) The right of citizens of Canada under subsections (1) and (2) to have their children receive primary and secondary school instruction in the language of the English or French linguistic minority population of a province

a) applies wherever in the province the number of children of citizens who have such a right is sufficient to warrant the provision to them out of public funds of minority language instruction; and

b) includes, where the number of those children so warrants, the right to have them receive that instruction in minority language educational facilities provided out of public funds."

The lawsuit seeking full control over its school system came as no surprise to Liberal education critic Eric Fairclough.

"That school board has had enough of this government's total inability to provide for the students of the Yukon," he said in a statement. "My only surprise is why it took so long."

Meanwhile, NDP Education critic Steve Cardiff said the lawsuit, though a disappointment, wasn't a surprise to him either, given that the government has not worked co-operatively with the school board.

"I view going to court as a failure (of the government)," he said, suggesting Education Minister Patrick Rouble needs to make this his top priority.

While the lawsuit may have been filed, Cardiff said it's not too late for the minister to initiate a co-operative approach to resolve the situation.

"I think that's what the minister needs to do," he said.

Rouble did not return the Star's phone calls seeking comment on the lawsuit.