Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member opposite for his question. Some people, including the Commissioner of Official Languages, wonder about the ability of the Government of Canada to keep the promises it made in the Action Plan for Official Languages announced on March 12, 2003.
As the Minister responsible for Official Languages already made clear to this House, we are still determined to implement the action plan in its entirety and to achieve the ambitious objectives we have set.
Allow me to refer to this section of the Speech from the Throne of October 5, 2004.
What makes our communities work is our deep commitment to human rights and mutual respect. The Government is committed to these values. It is implementing the Official Languages Action Plan and will continue to promote the vitality of official language minority communities.
The $751 million announced when the action plan was made public two years ago was fully maintained in the last budget. As planned from the start, these investments will increase from year to year until 2007-08.
The mid-point report will be an opportunity to spotlight key accomplishments by the departments concerned by the action plan. For example, in the health sector, the Société santé en français created 17 community health networks throughout the country, thereby contributing to improving services to francophone minority communities. In fact, according to what departmental officials told us just recently in the official languages committee, $108 million of the $119 million earmarked for health was already committed.
In the field of immigration, the steering committee made public on March 30 a summary of initiatives, 2002-2006, to foster immigration to francophone minority communities, entitled, “Towards Building a Canadian Francophonie of Tomorrow”.
As for justice, a pilot project has been set up for the training of bilingual crown prosecutors for Ontario and other provinces, and as well there is an English version of the Quebec Civil Code. What is more, last week the Minister of Canadian Heritage announced that the Government of Canada and CMEC had reached agreement on the essential parameters for the next protocol on minority-language education and second-language instruction. These long-awaited agreements on education are now settled.
Another initiative is forthcoming that will also benefit official language minority communities. In March, the Minister responsible for Official Languages and his colleague, the Minister of State responsible for Human Resources Development, announced $12 million per year over three years for the enabling fund to support the economic development partnership initiative for official language minority communities, known as the RDÉE or Réseau de développement économique et d'employabilité.
Not only will this progress report let parliamentarians, minority communities and all Canadians know what projects have been carried out to implement the action plan, it will also allow us to make any necessary adjustments.
I am sure that this report, which we will be releasing this fall, will show that the government is far from losing its head of steam as far as its official languages action plan is concerned. On the contrary, we are on the right track to fulfilling our commitments and achieving the ambitious objectives we have set for ourselves.