Official Languages committee  I have the very same question.

Official Languages committee  However, I am not ready to give you an answer now. As I said previously, I do not want to minimize the importance of the commissioner's statement, but I have a whole set of questions. One of my questions is very similar to the one that you just put to me. At this stage, I am still dealing with questions and I have not gotten to the answers yet, but I am looking for them.

Official Languages committee  In my statement, I said that one of the things that need to be emphasized, trivial as it may seem, is the fact that French is a Canadian language. This is just a polite way of saying that anglophone universities often teach French as a foreign language. Since my book was published, I have often said that we have all that we need to make our language policy work, but now we have to put the elements together in the right way.

Official Languages committee  What I want to know before giving a clear answer is the connection between the problems and programs that you have identified, and the initiatives that Mr. Lemieux recently mentioned. I do not know whether the government's statements have anything to do with your concerns. But there is one thing I would like to say.

Official Languages committee  When I attended this committee in June as a journalist, I heard a presentation by Minister Josée Verner, where she spoke of an action plan. As a journalist, I asked her some questions about this. First, I asked her whether this action plan was alive and well, and she answered that she was studying it to see if it could be improved.

Official Languages committee  Of course, I want to answer your second question first. As an anglophone in Quebec, I have never felt the frustration that others have felt. The only thing that frustrated me a bit was this mantra repeated by the francophone majority, saying that Quebec's anglophone institutions hold their existence to its generosity.

Official Languages committee  No, I was not familiar with this bill. So I cannot comment on it in detail. However, what I can say is what I said earlier to another member: if people feel vulnerable once they reach a certain age and have to deal with the health care system, clearly it is also true that people who are accused are in an extremely vulnerable situation.

Official Languages committee  I have made note of your concerns, but I do not want to say things on the second round that I avoided saying on the first round. I share your concerns, and I will look into these matters carefully.

Official Languages committee  Of course, a loss is a loss. Personally, I spent 10 years in Quebec as a member of the anglophone community — three years in Montreal and seven in Quebec City. In Quebec City I noticed that the needs of the anglophone minority community changed over time. Even in Montreal, the community there is aging.

Official Languages committee  In principle, I think this type of initiative is very important. I must confess that I have not examined these particular initiatives in detail, but where official languages are concerned, all areas of education—primary, secondary, post-secondary and labour force training—are very important.

Official Languages committee  I think that it is very important. To some extent, the commissioner's role as liaison between the minority communities and the government amounts to support for minority communities so that they can be heard. The commissioner's role is also to try to act as a link between you, the members of Parliament, the minority communities and the government.

Official Languages committee  I know that the history of the two official languages within the armed forces is not always glowing. In his memoirs, Jean-Victor Allard, who was the Chief of the Defence Staff, wrote that at one time joining the Canadian armed forces meant that francophones were headed toward assimilation and the losts of their culture.

Official Languages committee  As I said, I think these two concepts do come together. Being a francophone no longer means what it meant 40 or 50 years ago. In the past, there was total identification between the French language and the French-Canadian community. It was really unusual for immigrants to come to Canada and to be integrated into the French-speaking community as others always had been in English.

Official Languages committee  Without commenting directly on a decision of the current government, and without considering all the ramifications, I would like to make this point. One of the things I have been struck by is the growing interest for French in British Columbia. There are 30,000 students in immersion programs alone.

Official Languages committee  For 40 years, the francophone communities inside and outside Quebec have been transformed, not just psychologically but also economically, from the status of a minority into an integrative society. I think that at the moment, immigrants to Canada have a genuine choice about integrating into the francophone community, obviously in Quebec, but also in a place like Toronto, for example, where more and more francophones who arrive from other countries send their children to French schools.