Mary T. Moreau

Mary T. Moreau, justice of the Supreme Court of Canada (2023–present), chief justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta (2017–23), judge, lawyer (born 1955 or 1956 in Edmonton, AB). Mary T. Moreau has served as a justice on the Supreme Court of Canada since 6 November 2023. With her appointment, the gender balance of the Court shifted to majority women for the first time in its history. Moreau was the first woman appointed as chief justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta. She is also the first French Canadian Supreme Court justice from Western Canada. She is well known for litigating several landmark cases concerning minority language rights, as well as cases related to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. She has been actively involved in matters of judicial ethics, administration and education throughout her career.

Early Life and Family

Mary T. Moreau was born in Edmonton in the mid-1950s and is Franco-Albertan. She is the sixth of eight children and comes from a multi-generational bilingual and bicultural family. She is French Canadian on her father’s side and English Canadian on her mother’s side. The French side of Moreau’s family can be traced back to 1642.

Moreau’s paternal grandfather left Quebec in the early 1900s and established roots in Hoey, a francophone community in Saskatchewan. (See also Francophones of Saskatchewan.) Her father, Joseph Moreau, was sent to a Jesuit school in Edmonton at the age of 12. He went on to become an orthopedic surgeon, professor and school trustee. He was also involved in advocating for French minority rights and greater access to French-language schooling in Alberta. For his efforts, a Catholic school board named a middle school in his honour. Moreau has referred to her father’s quest to secure French-language education rights in Alberta as having a formative impact on her views on minority rights. The fight for French language rights in Alberta has been part of her family’s history since the early 20th century.

In her youth, Moreau experienced limitations imposed on Franco-Albertans. These included provincial regulations that limited access to French-language instruction. Moreau would later note that these limitations made her a champion of and advocate for minority language rights. (See also Section 23 and Francophone Education outside of Quebec.)

Education

In the summer of 1974, Mary Moreau attended the Université de Montréal to study French. She then studied at Faculté Saint-Jean, the University of Alberta’s French-language campus, from 1974 to 1976. She completed a Bachelor of Arts in French.

Moreau’s decision to pursue law studies went against the grain in her family. Not only was her father an accomplished surgeon, but two of her older brothers also became orthopedic surgeons. Both of Moreau’s older sisters were studying to be nurses when she chose to go to law school.

Moreau completed her Bachelor of Laws in 1979. Her studies also included the common law/civil law exchange program at the Université de Sherbrooke, which she completed in 1977. For several summers in the late 1970s, while studying law, Moreau worked for the CBC in Edmonton as a journalist and news bulletin editor for radio and TV.

Legal Career

Mary Moreau was called to the Alberta Bar in 1980. Her initial private practice focused on criminal law, constitutional law and civil litigation. She practiced in her hometown of Edmonton.

Paquette Case

Mary Moreau first came to national prominence as a lawyer with the Paquette case. It was a legal challenge by Luc Paquette to have his case heard in French, by a French-speaking jury. When Moreau began representing Paquette in 1984, he was not permitted to be tried in Alberta in French, his mother tongue. A Franco-Ontarian, Paquette was charged with possession of cocaine with the intent to sell. Moreau discovered that Paquette’s right to be tried in French predated Alberta’s creation as a province in 1905. Over six years, she fought for his right to be tried in his first language. The fight took her all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. She ultimately won the case.

As a result of this experience, Moreau co-founded the Association des juristes d'expression française de l’Alberta. It is dedicated to protecting and promoting French-language rights in the province.

Mahé Case

Mary Moreau represented the appellants in Mahé v. Alberta, an important Supreme Court of Canada decision. It found that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees that parents of the official language minority in each province have the right to be represented on public school boards, or to have a school board of their own.

The case came about when three Franco-Albertan parents were dissatisfied with the quality of French-language instruction in a public school. They were denied the right to create a new French school within an autonomous francophone school board by both the provincial government and the extant school boards serving their children. In this case, Moreau continued in her father and grandfather’s efforts to improve access to French-language public education in Western Canada.

Judicial Career

In 1994, at the age of 38 and after only 14 years in practice, Mary Moreau was appointed to the Court of Queen’s Bench in Alberta. She was appointed deputy judge of the Supreme Court of Yukon on 19 January 1996 and deputy judge of the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories on 16 March 2005.

From 2011 to 2012, Moreau served as president of the Canadian Superior Courts Judges Association. From 2014 to 2017, she was a member of the federal government’s advisory committee on judicial ethics. The committee provides confidential advisory opinions on ethical issues to federally appointed judges. In 2017, Moreau became the first woman to be appointed chief justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta, the province’s superior court.

Omar Khadr Case

Omar Khadr was a Canadian child soldier convicted of murdering an American soldier in Afghanistan in 2002. Only 15 years old at the time, Khadr had been sent to Afghanistan by his father, who was allegedly affiliated with the terrorist group al-Qaeda. Khadr was ultimately taken to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and held for eight years before he pleaded guilty to the charges against him. He became the first minor since the Second World War to be prosecuted for alleged war crimes. He was imprisoned for 12 years and seven months.

However, in 2010 the Supreme Court of Canada determined that his detainment violated “the principles of fundamental justice.” Despite repeated attempts by the Canadian government to keep him imprisoned, he was released on bail in 2015. In 2017, the federal government paid Khadr $10.5 million in recognition that his Charter rights had been violated. It was Justice Moreau who determined — citing Supreme Court Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella’s arguments on the reduced capacity and culpability of minors — that Khadr had served his time in interim release following his release from prison in 2015.

Awards

In 1978, while still a law student, Mary Moreau won the University of Alberta Faculty of Law Constitutional Law Prize. She received an honorary doctorate from the University of Alberta in 2019 and the Médaille du Doyen from the University of Alberta’s Campus Saint-Jean in 2020. Moreau also received the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal in 2022 and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Women in Law Leadership in 2023.