Official Languages committee  I will try to find my figures quickly. I am not familiar with these figures because the 2006-2007 figures, which are the ones I usually use and which will soon appear in the annual report, show $226 million in expenses. You were talking about total expenses for education.

Official Languages committee  Now this is the total expenditure for communities. I see $226 million. For the previous year, in the same category, I have $232 million.

Official Languages committee  Yes. The 2006-2007 figures, as I said, have not yet been published. However, those are, more or less, the figures I am preparing to recommend to the minister for publication in the yearly report. Why would there be a difference? These figures are not quite of the same magnitude

Official Languages committee  Yes, the percentages are published in the annual reports. The percentage spent by each province on the Development of Official Languages Communities program, would give us an approximate idea. In fact, by definition, whatever is spent in Quebec for developing the minority communi

Official Languages committee  I will have to consult my notes.

Official Languages committee  If you want, I will be glad to answer you in writing.

Official Languages committee  I could not tell you. I imagine that you are referring to studies from the Conseil supérieur de la langue française du Québec. Perhaps there are studies going on. I know that the issue of people of francophone lineage who leave the Island of Montreal to settle on the south shore

Official Languages committee  Overall in Canada it is rising, although in some provinces there have been some small decreases. Because it has increased in Ontario in particular, which is obviously the most populous province, as well as in the two western provinces, Alberta and B.C., the numbers have increased

Official Languages committee  This might annoy my Quebec anglophone friends, but if we look at the figures, we can see that much more money is spent in support of francophones outside of Quebec than for the Quebec anglophones. This is blatantly obvious. To my colleague's answer, let me add that the problems t

Official Languages committee  The numbers are approximately as follows. There are, roughly speaking, 2.4 million students presently in Canada learning a second official language. Of those, 300-plus are in French immersion. And although the federal funding that goes to the provinces--

Official Languages committee  It's 300,000. The portion of the federal funding that goes through the provinces towards second language instruction targets in particular, but not only, immersion. So you could say that we focus a lot on immersion, although we also spend money on the improvement of what we call

Official Languages committee  I would say a majority probably goes to immersion.

Official Languages committee  They go through the provinces. All of those moneys go through the provinces through bilateral agreements.

Official Languages committee  There's a mix of historical formulas, the subtleties of which probably go back to 30 years ago, and some targeted funding that is indeed more of a specific function of the numbers of students who do learn the second language in every province. That's how the allocation of the mon

Official Languages committee  It is both a success and an essential service for the future of the communities. Enabling these communities to have educational institutions of their own that offer quality programs for the entire time children are in school is key. In that regard, we can say that the plan has ma