moved for leave to introduce Bill C-373, an act to amend the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act (provincial legislation contravening the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms).
Mr. Speaker, I am, in fact, introducing two bills whose purpose is to wake up francophone members outside Quebec who are usually asleep or hide their heads in the sand when enforcement of the Official Languages Act in Canada is at stake. The President of the Treasury Board, when he was principal secretary at Foreign Affairs, even tossed out the Official Languages Act.
This bill is intended to give enforcement of the Official Languages Act in Canada more teeth. It would ensure that funding earmarked for Canadian francophone communities gets to those communities. Unfortunately, this money is appropriated by the provinces for other purposes.
The bill therefore suggests that transfer payments to those provinces be reduced, if the money does not go to these communities or if the provinces violate the Canadian Constitution as it applies to the minority rights of francophones. That is, in fact, the case in most Canadian provinces.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)