Michel Thibodeau sought $19,500 in damages from the federal government.

A language rights activist who sought financial compensation from the federal government over English-only construction signs at Parliament Hill has lost his appeal.

The Federal Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal of Michel Thibodeau despite a finding by the court that his “language rights had been violated.”

“In the very specific circumstances of this case, the remedies sought by Mr. Thibodeau should not be granted,” Justice Vanessa Rochester wrote in the decision on behalf of a three-judge panel.

The signage around Parliament, which was the subject of complaints filed by Thibodeau, included yellow “caution” signs, ones held by construction workers that said “slow” and “stop,” as well as a sign that read “danger due to work overhead” — all without French equivalents. Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) — the government department responsible for the signs — had agreements with contractors to provide signage in both official languages, but officials said it was difficult to monitor all of them given the size of the work site.

In 2019, Thibodeau filed 13 complaints in all to the official languages commissioner about the signs.

In a July 2021 report, the language commissioner concluded that Thibodeau’s complaints were all well-founded and that PSPC had breached its language obligations under the Official Languages Act.

Thibodeau sought a total of $19,500 in damages — $1,500 in for each of 13 complaints he filed at the official languages commissioner over the unilingual signs. But last year a Federal Court judge determined that any damage award would be “inappropriate or unjust.”

In the Federal Court of Appeal decision dismissing Thibodeau’s appeal, Rochester wrote that his “actions in this case constitute behaviour that is inconsistent with the spirit and the letter of the settlement he had reached with PSPC” in a previous case.

In 2018, Thibodeau settled another case against the government department about a similar matter and PSPC issued a formal apology to him. Rochester found that the 13 complaints were “almost identical to the complaints that were the subject of his previous application.”

While many of the details about the previous settlement were redacted in the recent court decision, the Federal Court of Appeal said that “the context is important” and acknowledged that PSPC settled the dispute “in good faith.”

“While Mr. Thibodeau certainly disagrees with the Federal Court’s decision, he has not, in my view, demonstrated the existence of an error warranting this Court’s intervention,” Rochester said.

“I also agree with the Federal Court that the particular circumstances in which Mr. Thibodeau discovered the breaches weigh against granting the remedies he seeks in the present case, including the declaratory relief.”

Thibodeau did not provide comment before deadline and it was unclear if he planned to seek leave to appeal the case to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Thibodeau has been challenging public institutions to uphold official language laws for years. He has attributed a particular incident in 2000 in sparking his activism. He had tried to order a 7Up from a flight attendant on an Air Ontario flight from Montreal and was escorted off the plane by police upon landing.

“That started the whole thing for me,” he previously told the Ottawa Citizen.

In recent years, he has been successful in several cases he’s filed against Canadian airport authorities — including one against the St. John’s International Airport Authority in which he was awarded $5,000 in damages as the airport authority had published a number of communications exclusively in English.

The Federal Court also ordered the Greater Toronto Airports Authority to pay Thibodeau $3,500 for violating his language rights by issuing an English-only media release, as well as for English-only signage at an airport ATM and a children’s fun zone.

While some see Thibodeau as a gadfly, Justice Peter Pamel — the Federal Court judge on the Greater Toronto Airports Authority case — has likened his efforts to those of a federal government whistleblower.

PSPC did not immediately provide comment on the Federal Court of Appeal’s decision.

With files from Andrew Duffy.

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