Electoral Reform committee  Without commenting on a specific system, our position is fairly clear. We're calling for a direct link between the electorate, a geographically defined constituency, and the representative in the House. We will see what is contained in the legal impact study from Maître Power when it comes out.

Electoral Reform committee  We weren't involved in those consultations.

Electoral Reform committee  I want to put a nuance around that. You asked a question about the general public. We're not here representing the general public. We're here representing an official language community, and the notion here of the government's duty to consult with official language communities on matters that affect the linguistic rights of Canadians.

Electoral Reform committee  Just as a way of background, before the committee began its work, we'd been following and preparing for this presentation on electoral reform and trying to engage the community. The challenge we found in trying to engage our community is that there just wasn't a lot of pickup. I don't think people in our community, the folks we work with, understand why we're engaged in this conversation, and what's in it for them.

Official Languages committee  What I mean is that I don't have time to think about it. I'm just hearing about it.

Official Languages committee  It's an argument, I suppose. First of all, our understanding is that the $350 million that we're talking about was money additional to the labour force agreements, and that this is federal money that was put in after to specifically address unemployment challenges after the 2008 crash.

Official Languages committee  I guess our position would still remain that from our community's perspective this is a good thing because English-speaking businesses and English-speaking job seekers will have easier access to public resources in the official language of their choice. For us, it's not a matter of cutting it out.

Official Languages committee  I do. Again, the federal partner is still involved. If the federal partner is not involved in the transaction, then we have less chance of accessing the program in the official language of our choice. If the program is delivered by the Government of Quebec, we will not be able to access the program in English.

Official Languages committee  It's an interesting idea.

Official Languages committee  The third generation.

Official Languages committee  We could certainly provide those figures. I could do that analysis and provide that analysis. We have those numbers.

Official Languages committee  It's funny, we have right here—this is for tomorrow's presentation to your colleagues—a workshop report, “Quebec's English Speaking Immigrants and Poverty: Sharing our analysis and building a research agenda”. So we have research on poverty within the English-speaking immigrant population.

Official Languages committee  If I can respond then, our purpose here is to talk about our community and not about minority communities in other jurisdictions. My specific point on that was in Alberta there's a Francophone Secretariat where the francophone community in Alberta can go to the Francophone Secretariat under the Alberta French language services act and they can talk to the Government of Alberta about the problems that they have receiving services in their official language with the Government of Alberta.

Official Languages committee  There are two warriors in the conversation in Quebec. One is a demographer named Castonguay, and the other is Jack Jedwab. Every time these numbers come out, there's a big fight in the press. Median income is the income at which 50% of the incomes are above and 50% of the incomes are below.

Official Languages committee  The design of the consultation takes into account the needs of the two communities. I think RDÉE is doing the consultation on the francophone side and I think what CEDEC is leading the consultation on the side of the English-speaking community of Quebec. CEDEC and QCGN are talking right now to make sure that the community's overall development plan is tied into the economic development plan that will come.