ne plus ul·tra

noun \ˌnā-ˌpləs-ˈəl-trə, ˌnē-\

Definition of NE PLUS ULTRA

1

: the highest point capable of being attained : acme

2

: the most profound degree of a quality or state 

 

Pretty cool, isn't it, to name a private French-language instruction school NEC Plus Ultra?  If that isn't a neat play on words and meanings, what is, then?  All the more so when the owner of that school has managed to gain herself the inside track, as it were.  She has engineered for her French-language-training school the enviable reputation of a winner.  Little wonder that, since she illicitly utilized copies of the government's own Second Language Evaluation tests to prepare government bureaucrats for their exams. 

She's way, way ahead, understandably, of all her competitors.  Who, either because they haven't been able to get their greedy little hands on the same documents she's been successful in acquiring, or because they recognize that something that is copyrighted is not meant to be used for their private financial benefit, have abstained from emulating her.  These irrational and petty hindrances to those with an ethical conscience, however, don't appear ever to have bothered Madeleine Rundle, the school owner.

She pleaded in court that her business (and her bank account) would certainly suffer irreparable harm if she were to operate on a level playing field, just like all the other language-training schools out there, also trying to drum up business, and lagging behind because her school through her clever machinations, has had the inside track.  Federal lawyers point out that she was operating in a blatantly unfair manner and in the process undermining the government's entire language testing regime.

In his written decision, Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Smith granted an injunction against NEC Plus Ultra, at the federal government's request.  "Allowing her to use a copy of the SLE test questions invalidates the test results and gives her students a very unfair advantage", went the written decision, arrived at three years after the lawsuit was launched by government for copyright infringement and breach of confidence.

The legal suit resulted from a Public Service Commission audit dating from May 2009 concluding that NEC Plus Ultra gave its French students practice tests that were dead ringers to the official reading and writing tests used by the commission itself on the government's behalf.  Moreover, government was forced to lay out $1-million to revise those tests once it became aware that their usefulness had been compromised.

And then, the Public Service Commission became aware that NEC Plus Ultra had once again obtained a copy of those new, altered tests, once again attempting to enrich herself at a cost to the taxpayers, and in the process destroying the useful integrity of the new, revised tests.  And how's this for chutzpah?  Ms. Rundle's argument went like this: it was not she who was at fault for the situation, it was the government's responsibility to safeguard test questions.

That the tests are conspicuously stamped protected and copyrighted doesn't appear to have given her pause.  Practice materials that she presented to her students were copies of the government's documents.  Ms. Rundle's school's reading comprehension test was replete with 98% of questions from the official text; the writing test represented 89% of the official text.  To comment, as did Justice Smith that "there is a strong case" that the school's tests were directly copied from the government's represents a clear understatement.

NEC Plus Ultra is one of roughly fifty such language training schools in the city.  But its success rate in turning out candidates that produced superior results, ten times more advanced than other schools for people applying for bilingual positions with the federal public service ensured she would have the lion's share of applicants.  Guess she'll now have to resort to legitimate training sessions without an insider's leg up, henceforth.