Official Languages committee  You do, ma'am, but through the provinces.

Official Languages committee  What I'm saying is that if it's a question of where the federal government can reach out to make a direct impact on the production of qualified immersion teachers, it's in teachers colleges, in Canadian universities.

Official Languages committee  Just thinking back to the questions from Monsieur Dion, and also from Mr. Benskin and Mr. Galipeau, to your question, ma'am, about what the federal government can do, there are lots of areas where the federal government works that are not the federal government's jurisdiction. Th

Official Languages committee  Education is a provincial responsibility, no question, but not at the college level and not at the university level. Where can the federal government directly reach into? It can directly reach into the colleges and it can directly reach into the universities. The federal govern

Official Languages committee  I think our key message today to the committee, Monsieur Dion, is that bilingualism is a key tool for our economic success. Bilingualism is what allows us to work in Quebec. It's a matter of economics for us. Immersion is a tool. Perhaps as a committee you could link for our min

Official Languages committee  It may not be money, Monsieur Dion. It might be the redirection of programs. Immersion right now is considered, for example, an educational problem and is dealt with by Canadian Heritage. It is dealt with in federal-provincial education transfers. But if bilingualism is looked

Official Languages committee  The mission would be to provide targeted funding, in this case for isolated communities that don't have the educational access that they require and the economic development access that they require, recognizing bilingualism as a tool of economic development, working in partnersh

Official Languages committee  We can take the Canada-Quebec agreement on health as an example. Part of the money that's provided is for a project that's run out of McGill University, which provides English language training to francophone health professionals. You may know that Quebec recently abandoned the

Official Languages committee  I think the people to answer your question in detail, Mr. Gourde, would be from the Quebec English School Boards Association, who I believe will be invited, hopefully, to provide testimony for this study. Our general understanding is that the bulk of our teachers come from Quebec

Official Languages committee  For the managerial question of what level, CCB, BCB, A, or whatever it is, the principle is for you, the parliamentarians, to have equal access to the individual in question. When you're in the cafeteria, does that person feel completely comfortable coming up and sitting at your

Official Languages committee  I think we called for something a little stronger. I think linguistic duality is a core value, or it is not.

Official Languages committee  If it is a core value then it is a job requirement to be able to speak in both of Canada's official languages without the aid of an interpreter to do your job. That's it. It's not about getting along; it's not about being able to say “hello”; it's not about being able to communi

Official Languages committee  Our position on that would be to ask what benefit it would be to get managerial in an act of Parliament. What you're trying to do here is operationalize a value, which is linguistic duality. By putting a specific limit on it, what you're in effect saying is that you're limiting t

Official Languages committee  It's a creative level of vagueness. I think big ideas are often legislated in vague terms. The Constitution Act, 1982 was not specific in a number of things. That's why we have the Supreme Court. It's why the law develops and it's why the law is flexible. Flexibility is somethin

Official Languages committee  I would bow to your expertise as a parliamentarian. It would seem to me that the Governor in Council is not as accountable to Parliament as parliamentarians are to themselves. If a bill were to pass the House where a position was created that didn't have the proviso of the need t