Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Let me add my voice to that of my colleagues welcoming the panel here this morning.
The question I have is one of your drawing on your own background to help answer the question, and what I'm referring to is French being spoken outside of Ontario.
Once you start heading west there's very little French, outside of immersion schools that teach some French programs and some core French. But as you move farther west...in fact, in B.C. I've been given to understand the second language is now Mandarin. That's the one chosen by most of the young people who are attending secondary school.
I would invite the panel to share with us on the committee here how we will change that around. What can we do to increase the probability of young people taking French? Moms and dads basically don't take French; it's the young people who are going to school who elect to take the French program. The parents may support that, but it's still up to the kids to make that decision. What do you see that we can do to again increase the probability of French being introduced more and taught more in secondary schools in the western part of Canada?
Do any members of the panel care to comment on that?