About us

What is planctus ?

Planctus is a mobile application that facilitates the preparation and submission of complaints to the various competent authorities in Canada, such as the Commissioner of Official Languages of Canada, the Ontario Ombudsman, the Languages Commissioner of Nunavut, and the City of Ottawa’s French Language Services Branch, to name just a few. In total, planctus allows you to submit complaints to 15 different competent authorities whose mission is to protect your language rights.

Did you know? The Latin word “planctus” means a beat, or the sound made by the thing that is beating. In medieval times, a planctus was also an elegiac literary and musical genre by which to express our grief and our grievances. It is related to the verb plangere, the etymological source of the word “complaint”.

About the Research Chair

The University of Ottawa’s Canadian Francophonie Research Chair in Language Rights (the Research Chair) was created in 2018 and awarded to Professor François Larocque of the Faculty of Law (Common Law Section). The objective of the Research Chair is to advance critical thinking about the legal frameworks that protect Canada’s official language minority communities and make a tangible contribution to the development of rights in this area. Although the Research Chair is generally concerned with the legal protection of official languages, it will focus primarily on the language rights of Francophone minority communities outside Quebec and the protection of indigenous languages.

Two areas of activity: research and action

1. The Research Chair’s first mission will be to document, analyze and comment on current legal developments in the field of language rights by studying the relevant decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada and other Canadian courts, the reports of the various language commissioners, draft legislation, and parliamentary studies. This process will also look at the secondary literature dealing with official language minority communities in a variety of disciplines, including public law, political science, history, and sociology. In particular, the Research Chair will endeavour to build collaborative relationships with the University of Ottawa’s other Canadian Francophonie research chairs and with other Canadian research centres working in this field.
2. The Research Chair’s second mission will be to operationalize its research by taking an active role in developing the constitutional, legislative and jurisprudential norms governing language rights. For example, the Research Chair will prepare reports on current major language issues and submit them to the Senate and House of Commons committees on official languages. In addition, the Research Chair will intervene in language rights cases to present the courts with innovative legal arguments supported by rigorous interdisciplinary research. Planctus was born out of this activist mission of the Research Chair.

Visit the Research Chair’s website to learn more about its projects and activities.