Official Languages committee  Thank you for your questions. I will begin with the last question as to whether the interest in teaching Chinese will necessarily have an impact on French. Personally, I have lived in China and I learned Chinese. I believe it is a beautiful language that certainly deserves to b

Official Languages committee  Personally, I don't know about it, but Christine seems to be more up to speed. So I will turn it over to her.

Official Languages committee  Yes, I believe it would be important to make it public.

Official Languages committee  I'll begin. We frequently conduct consultations. We have two major bi-annual meetings, one in June and the other in November. In the context of those meetings, we usually organize a community cooperation forum in which members take part, along with the francophone community as a

Official Languages committee  Yes.

Official Languages committee  Yes.

Official Languages committee  Exactly. According to Statistics Canada, there are 70,000 mother tongue francophones and 230,000 persons with knowledge of French. We are often reminded that the francophone community is the fourth or fifth largest community in British Columbia. However, it should be noted that F

Official Languages committee  Yes.

Official Languages committee  I'll start answering the question and then hand off to Ms. Sotteau. The important fact I mentioned earlier is that the number of students in immersion programs has doubled in 10 years. That's a significant phenomenon. Immigration is also a significant phenomenon. Over time, the

Official Languages committee  That's precisely what the Overall Development Plan 2009-2014 will enable us to do. We're going to start evaluation efforts next year. We've already planned some meetings. Since we've established some evaluation tools by adopting our Overall Development Plan, within two years, tha

Official Languages committee  B.C.'s francophone community is a bit different from other communities elsewhere in Canada. We have to deal with a major challenge as a result of the low percentage of francophones. In absolute terms, our community is very large. It's the third largest after those of Ontario and

Official Languages committee  Excellent. Ms. Denise Savoie is doing an excellent job, which we very much appreciate. The Hon. James Moore is also a major francophile from the community in British Columbia. A number of other members also speak French, including Mr. Weston, whom I don't know, but who supports

Official Languages committee  There are 34 francophone agencies. There are nine federal departments and agencies. There are some provincial ones as well.

Official Languages committee  That's a good question. Ms. Sotteau, can you answer?

Official Languages committee  We talked to them about it in response to the employment services problems. One thing surprised us. We hadn't been consulted at all, by either the federal or the provincial government. That prevented us from maintaining service delivery as we had previously done.