Bill S-3 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Official Languages Act (promotion of English and French)

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind the House that, unlike the political party to which the hon. member for Gatineau belongs, we and the other members of this House voted in favour of Bill S-3 on official languages. Accordingly, the Bloc is in no position to be lecturing us. We will work to ensure that linguistic duality is just as strong in the Canadian armed forces as it is in other federal institutions.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind the House that, unlike the political party to which the hon. member for Gatineau belongs, we and the other members on this side of the House voted to support Bill S-3, regarding official languages. As a result, we will not be taking any lessons from the Bloc Québécois. We are going to work to ensure that linguistic duality is just as strong in the Canadian armed forces as it is in other federal institutions.

[Marc Arnal, Dean, St-Jean Campus, University of Alberta]

Thank you, Mr. Godin.

I would like to start by expressing our moral and spiritual support to your colleague Daniel Petit, who is absent today, in light of the trying times he is currently going through. His daughter-in-law works with us and his son used to be a student at the campus. We share a certain emotional bond with him.

Yesterday, I received a call from my friend Jean Watters, who you met in Vancouver. He told me that you had asked many questions about the participation of francophones in the Olympic Games to be held in Vancouver. I am the President of the Canadian Foundation for Cross-Cultural Dialogue, which is responsible for ensuring francophone content at the Games. I would be pleased, together with our Director General, Guy Matte, to come meet with you in Ottawa and talk more specifically about the Olympic Games, if you wish. I would also like to indicate that the Governor General, Her Excellency the Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean, is the honorary president of this foundation, which few people have heard about, but which is very active. This is sort of an invisible organization.

I will now talk to you as a Franco-Manitoban living in Alberta. I am very pleased to welcome you to one of the most dynamic francophone areas in Canada. You have heard from witnesses about the vitality of communities. In my view, vitality depends on a number of factors. Interesting and promising studies are currently being done in Acadia, particularly by Rodrigue Landry and his research centre. They deal with such issues as institutional completeness and its impact on vitality. Some of our researchers are taking part in those studies.

Furthermore, I think that service delivery models need to be re-examined. Who has not had the experience of going up to a counter at federal office where a sign indicates that services are in both English and French and being told by the person behind the sign that he or she did not speak French? That should warrant a jail term. That completely undermines all the efforts made by the Government of Canada. And yet, we see that happening every day. That is unacceptable.

With regard to the legal and regulatory framework, I think that there has been constant progress since 1969, with the latest provisions enacted under Bill S-3, I think. There has also been an evolution in thinking. I will get back to that later.

The thought patterning in society at large and in minority communities is the last but not the least factor. We become what we perceive ourselves to be, and that is especially true in the case of our minority groups. At the St-Jean Campus, to come back to the issue of institutional completeness, 650 students are receiving their education in French. You are perhaps not aware that the University of Alberta is one of the five largest universities in Canada. I believe it was ranked 37^th in the world by Newsweek. It is a renowned institution. Our students, some 70% of whom are immersion program graduates, are native English speakers. Our challenge is to turn these students, who are linguistic bilinguals, into complete bilinguals within two or four years, depending on their programs of study. In other words, they are asked to acquire French and English as both individual and common languages.

The process is a long and difficult one, but we will achieve our ends in large part thanks to the support we receive from the Government of Canada through bilateral agreements.

Some people, including the husband of the former Governor General, advocated the idea of “sowing” French-language courses in all Canadian post-secondary institutions. That is very noble and advisable, but it should not be done at the expense of institutions that are equipped to lead students who are theoretically bilingual to become functional bilinguals. I am not sure that this has been thought out in the Department of Canadian Heritage, and elsewhere. I would like to point out that a community college is being established in Alberta. We are expecting to receive the authorization from the university and the province very shortly.

Finally, I would like to say a few words about Bill S-3. This is a wonderful bill, and I commend Parliament for having passed it. My wife, who is a public servant, told me however

that they get lectured at all the time about what it means, but nothing changes.

According to her, departments do not have strong enough accountability mechanisms to ensure that the bill's provisions can be turned into concrete measures, whether in the public service or society at large. Over 50 % of Albertans support official languages. Imagine: we are talking about approximately 59 % of Albertans.

So what are we waiting for to implement a vision and proclaim the importance of our linguistic duality, which I continue to call Canada's common languages? We have to promote linguistic duality as something that unites our country, one of the cornerstones on which today's Canadian citizenship and civic spirit have been established.

I could talk to you for days, but I will stop here.

Criminal Code

[Stephen Owen, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will begin today by talking a bit about the theory of criminal justice and how we get tough on crime, which is the slogan often used by those across the way.

We cannot get tough on crime without being smart on crime and that means not just descending into slogans, such as “getting tough on crime”, “war on crime” and “three strikes you're out”. We know where that rhetoric comes from and we know that it is based on false analysis. It is based on ideology and sloganism, not on criminological research, social research or demographics which all gives serious concern to knee-jerk, superficial stoking of the fears in society about a situation that may not exist. That is done for purposes that are ideological and polemical and they carry a real danger of being self-fulfilling.

I would like to take a few minutes to speak about how being tough on crime means being smart on crime first.

Let us just take the 12 bills dealing with criminal justice that are before this House and the one that is before the other place. The official opposition has offered this week to cooperate and fast track eight out of the eleven of those bills, and I will speak to the other two in a moment, but that is in no way doing anything but making this place work with sensible dialogue and debate over how to, without holding up any of these bills, ensure they are not more dangerous than what we are to believe they are to protect us against.

We have offered to fast track Bill C-9, the conditional sentencing bill. It has had serious debate and an appropriate amendment was moved by opposition parties so it can now go ahead. We will give it all the speed it needs.

We will fast track Bill C-18, the DNA identification act; Bill C-19, street racing; Bill C-23, criminal procedure improvements; and Bill C-26, payday loans. I would pause to say that five out of the six bills that I have just mentioned were actually initiated under the previous Liberal government. They will go forward with our support and with sensible amendments where necessary. We will fast track two other bills.

We opposed the judicial salaries bill because we opposed the suggestion by the government that it disregard the Judicial Compensation and Benefits Commission which recommended appropriate increases for judges' salaries over the last four year period. While we opposed that, we allowed it to pass on division so there would be no slowing up of that process.

The 13th bill is Bill S-3, the military sex offender act, which is now before the other place. We will be supporting that bill and are willing to fast track it in every way we can.

In the context of discussing the dangerous offender legislation, it is important to underline the cooperation that is going on in the House to identify what is important, to carry on work that was done by the previous government and to get some of these things moved ahead.

However, Bill C-27 is of a different order. The dangerous offender legislation before us has some major flaws that I will speak about but I would first say that we need a reality check. Let us take a reality check first on the criminal conviction statistics in Canada which have been steadily coming down over the last 10 to 15 years. That is what the research tells us. The demographics themselves in society are leading through analysis to that decline in the crime rate. While we may raise the fears of the public to justify simplistic solutions through sloganeering and superficial claims to put fear in the hearts of Canadians, the crime rate comes down.

Let us take another reality check on the situation in the U.S. where these slogans come from and much of this legislation seems to be patterned after. The United States has the highest crime rates and incarceration rates. It also has the most dangerous communities and the most expensive criminal justice system.

If we are to follow any model in the world when we amend our criminal justice statutes, we certainly do not want to follow the so-called war on crime in the United States.

Let me pause to mention that the state of California spends more on criminal justice and corrections than it spends on education. That should be very edifying to all of us.

Let me give another example about the folly of pretending that just by putting people in jail on very restrictive terms without any adjustment for the context of a particular case can be more dangerous for society. Most convicted people, dangerous or not, will get out. We have the Bernardos and some of the most horrid criminals in our country's history who will be behind bars, blessedly, forever, but most criminals will get out.

Let us think of those people who go into a prison situation, which members opposite would like to see everyone go into. It is a bit of an irony to consider that prison life, if that is what we can call it, prison for life, is the place in society which should be the most protected but is in fact the place where one is most likely to be assaulted, raped, infected and injected, and these people will come out.

Therefore, we need to take particular care for the correctional services, the proper services within them and who we put behind bars and for how long.

Let me speak about the fact that 25% of the prison population in this country is made up of aboriginal people. This is a stunning statistic of despair. Can this be the result of a fair criminal justice system or is this a result of despair in aboriginal communities? Is it part of the despair of our prevention system and our criminal justice system of preventative crime? Is it a matter of racism in society? What is happening?

These are the underpinning questions that we must be asking ourselves in the House as we respond to the reality of the criminal justice system. This is 1% of the population and 25% of the prison population.

Let us ensure that when people do come out of prison, if they are going to be spending time there, that they have been rehabilitated and they are safe to society because the vast majority will come out.

We will not ensure that the context of the situation is properly taken into account in peculiar circumstances unless police officers, prosecutors, judges, correctional officers and parole officers have the discretion to identify where the dangers are and where someone may have a better response to a criminal justice sanction than simply putting someone in jail for an indefinite period.

Turning to Bill C-27, the dangerous offender legislation, the member opposite has mentioned that there is dangerous offender legislation on the books now and it is operating. It operates as a companion with long term offender legislation which can kick in. Prosecutors have the discretion to bring forward at sentencing applications before a judge for a long term offender or a dangerous offender designation. That works. It has been covered by the Supreme Court of Canada in the Lyons and Johnson cases in 1997 and 2002. It has been found to be constitutionally appropriate. I would suggest that it is working because it allows for all the proper discretions to be exercised.

The problem with what is being suggested in Bill C-27, and it has been referred to by numerous members of the House, is the reverse onus provision at sentencing after a third conviction of a certain type of very serious crime.

We have heard some people say that this offends the presumption of innocence, which is an historical criminal law principle in our legal system. However, the trouble is not with the presumption of innocence, which is subsection 11(d) of the charter. The question is about the reverse onus of the burden. This is not a conviction matter. It is not a presumption of innocence because the person has already been convicted for the third time.

What we are talking about is whether fundamental justice, in reversing the onus on such an extraordinary punishment, can meet the tests under section 7 of the charter for fundamental justice. There is strong authority that this simply cannot be done. This does not meet the tests of fundamental justice. It involves, for instance, the convicted person proving a negative into the future. Yes, it is on the balance of probabilities and, yes, as the member opposite said, there is judicial discretion to determine whether that onus is met or not, but there is still a reverse onus and, in many cases, it is an impossible burden to attempt to prove a negative into the future.

It is also a problem because it offends section 7 as being against the principles of fundamental justice and it is a problem under section 1 as to whether this is a justifiable limit on the rights under the charter. Is it a substantive need? Is it a rational connection? Is there minimal impairment? I would say that under all those cases this reverse onus does not meet the test. This is highly constitutionally suspect. Why, when we have a provision that is working well, would we want to throw ourselves into very likely years of constitutional charter litigation when we have charter compliant provisions now for dangerous and long term offenders?

We also have a problem that this will not be enforceable. This is ultra vires of the federal government to tell the provincial governments, which are responsible for the administration of criminal justice, who they should prosecute and what sentences they should ask for. That simply cannot be supported in our constitutional division of powers and, therefore, it is inappropriate for the government to put this forward.

There are also dangerous unintended consequences that could come to the fore here. We have long delays in our criminal justice system today. A report in the paper last week showed that in the province of Ontario 100,000 charges have gone beyond the nine months before they actually go to trial. This is bouncing very perilously close up against the Supreme Court of Canada Askov decision where all members will remember with regret that 30,000 criminal cases were dismissed because it took too long for people to get to trial.

If people are facing this so-called simplistic, superficial three strikes and they are out law, which has been so disastrously unsuccessful and dangerous in the United States, they will insist on going to trial more often. There will be less guilty pleas which will cause further delays in the courts and perhaps more cases will be thrown out because of charter violations.

The one side of it is that there will be more trials, longer delays and more costs to the prison system. I have not even begun to talk about the hundreds of millions of dollars in capital costs that will be required to build the prisons that will hold these long term offenders.

Costs will be going up, delays will be longer and cases will be thrown out for charter violations because of delay. The other dynamic that may happen and where prosecutors, with long dockets and not wanting to have further delays in trials, may charge people with lesser offences than would otherwise justify a conviction for a more serious case that may give them a longer prison term, or the convicted person may plea bargain to a lesser offence.

Both of those dynamics are more likely to put dangerous people on the streets and put in danger the men and women the member opposite was just speaking about. We have to be very careful when we tinker with these laws, especially if we are doing it superficially and against the evidence of criminologists and social scientists as to what is effective and what is not.

Let us turn for a moment to what being tough on crime by being smart on crime really means. It means a national crime prevention strategy, such as the one the previous government put into place across this country over a period of 13 years, funded in a very targeted way, to help kids have things to do after school. If I may indulge myself in a short phrase, it is about shooting hoops, not drugs. There are sports programs across this country in the evening and even far into the night where kids who otherwise would have been getting in trouble are involved in healthy activity.

We have to watch for issues of poverty and cultural exclusion.

We have to look at the issue of legal aid, which is in underfunded disrepair across this country, thus involving people in perhaps building up criminal records when they should have been having trials and pleading not guilty. They are pleading guilty because they cannot defend themselves in the courts without assistance.

We have to look at issues of homelessness. We have to look at issues of mental illness. The Kirby-Keon Senate report was an extraordinary statement of sound thinking about how to deal with those with mental illnesses, who unfortunately fall into the ranks of the homeless as well as the ranks of the criminal justice system, which is the worst place for them to be. We have to rethink this and meet our social contract around the concept of deinstitutionalization, whereby governments emptied the mental hospitals but then did not provide services in the community to support people.

We have to look at drug courts. They are operating in Toronto and Vancouver and in numerous American states. That is one example of where the American criminal justice system has actually been a stunning success at diverting people out of the criminal system if they will go into detox and treatment.

We have to look at issues of harm reduction. Drugs, addiction and substance abuse are great parts of the despair that leads people into the criminal justice system. Harm reduction, of course, involves needle exchanges and safe injection sites, which the government has failed to guarantee would be extended in Vancouver, when it has been an example for literally the world to consider the effectiveness of harm reduction in that situation, to help motivate people into detox.

We need shelters for them. We need transitional housing. We need skills training. We need affordable housing. We need jobs. In fact, the social enterprise initiatives of the last Liberal government, which were ready to go across this country, certainly in my province of British Columbia, were cancelled by the current government in its last budget. Those are the things that can assist people to not fall into crime and into despair, which leads them to become dangerous for other members of society.

What are we going to do instead? We are going to dismantle the gun registry. It is amazing that any thought could be given to that at this stage after the tragedy at Dawson College in Montreal.

We have a Prime Minister who will not go to an international AIDS conference in Toronto. We have a Prime Minister who did not go to a world conference on harm reduction in Vancouver last April.

We are simply looking in the wrong direction. We have to be tough on crime, I agree with all members opposite, but we are going to be tough on crime by being smart on crime and not by being simply superficial and using slogans.

Canadian Heritage

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

Mr. Speaker, as everyone undoubtedly knows, I represent a Manitoba riding. When the province of Manitoba was created, francophones and anglophones were essentially equal in numbers, although francophones were the majority at one time. That did not last very long. Anglophones soon surpassed them in numbers and eventually suppressed the rights of the minority for 80 years. As the hon. member for Acadie—Bathurst no doubt knows, Georges Forest took matters into his hands and fought all the way to the Supreme Court. He did so with his own money and suffered tremendously as a result.

So, I am astonished that the Prime Minister would rise in this House and say that the court challenges program was a waste of money, that it only went to pay legal fees to Liberal lawyers. I find that entirely unacceptable.

Here is my question for my hon. colleague. Last year, when the Standing Committee on Official Languages voted in favour of Bill S-3, was that a political decision or not? Indeed, how can one vote in favour of Bill S-3, which essentially gives francophones the right to defend their constitutional rights, only to later take away the main tool that allows them to do exactly that? This is my question for the member for Acadie—Bathurst.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

If it is not right, then we should live with a dictatorial government. Let us not forget that the ministers and members of this government cannot even talk to the press. Is that the kind of Canada we want?

I can give examples of the contribution that the court challenges program has made to minorities, and the support they have drawn from it. In New Brunswick, an attempt was made to move the food inspectors from Shippagan to Moncton, in the Dieppe and Shediac regions, and the Association francophone des municipalités du Nouveau-Brunswick, thanks to money from the court challenges program of Canada, brought a court challenge and won its case. This decision was then brought before the Supreme Court by the Liberal government of the time, which contested the decision of the Federal Court of New Brunswick. At least the municipalities had some tools at the time to defend the minority communities.

Did they think that one person, an individual on his own, the Shippagan food inspector on his own, Mr. Gauvin and his colleagues, would have had the money to appeal to the Supreme Court? No.

That is what the Conservative government wants. It wants to lay down laws, it does not want citizens to defend themselves; it is depriving citizens of the right to bring a court action against the government. It is setting itself up as a saint, it believes it is perfect, it thinks it is establishing good laws which citizens must respect.

If that were the case, the government should not have to be afraid of investing in court challenges, for it would win in court. However it is shameful to remove the democratic tool that allows citizens to defend themselves in Federal Court, in the Supreme Court of Canada and in the provincial courts. The Conservatives should be ashamed. I do not know how they can sleep at night.

Let us consider the RCMP in New Brunswick, which was not providing service in both languages. Once again, New Brunswick organizations, through the SANB, received money from the court challenges program to go to court, and they won. At the time, the Liberals in power decided to contest this decision up to the Supreme Court. At least the organizations had the money to keep defending themselves.

If citizens and organizations cannot receive money through the court challenges program, to be fair the government should not have the right to take taxpayers’ money to fight citizens in court. That would be a bit more fair. Yet the government takes in money through taxes—whether citizens like it or not, taxes are deducted from their pay—and uses it to fight an individual in court. At the same time, it says it will not give the community the chance to benefit from this money in order to reach a happy medium, a balance of power. It is undemocratic to deprive citizens of such a tool.

The government machine is too big for the individual. That is what the Conservatives want, an American system where the individual feels all alone in life and has to manage all alone without any help.

In my opinion, the same is true of the status of women. The reason that women have made it to where they are today is because funding has been granted to create groups so that women are able to show what they can do and are recognized even here in Parliament.

Equality between men and women must also be recognized. Equality was not achieved as a result of the wishes of a single person who stood up one fine day and said that he or she wanted equality between the sexes so that women would be respected and government would support this. There were battles fought and there are organizations that worked hard to achieve that objective.

As for literacy, we are told that we do not want to spend money on older people, we want to fund young people instead. So we are being told that when we get to be 40 years old we are no longer citizens, we are no longer human beings? What kind of attitude is that, Mr. Speaker? The attitude that the Conservatives are taking today toward these people and these organizations is disgraceful. They are going to realize that there are people working in these organizations and that those people talk to one another. At this moment, those people are protesting and a big wave will be hitting Ottawa, telling them that they are not right and they do not deserve to be leading this country. They have taken things away from us that are fundamental to our country.

If you can imagine, two days before the literacy cuts the wife of the Prime Minister of Canada took part in a march for literacy, all the while her husband, right here in the House of Commons, was cutting the funding for literacy training. I hope that she will talk to him this evening and tell him that what he has done and what the Conservative government has done is not right.

We know people who worked at the same company until they were 40 or 50 years old and who always worked at the same job. With all the cuts going on in industry today, we have to help the workers and equip them with the skills they need so that they can find new jobs. And yet the Conservatives are telling us that there will be budget cuts for the organizations that do this, cutting the fat, they say.

So someone will have to go to the library in Bathurst by himself or herself to pick up a book. That person will go home and study independently, with no help from anyone, no teacher, no local organization. The same will be true in Timmins, Ontario, or in Regina, Saskatchewan, or in Edmonton, Alberta. People in Alberta love it when people from our hometowns work on their oil wells. What these cuts mean is that we will not give the people in our hometowns a hand so that they can learn to read and write. These are people who started working when they were very young and never had a chance to go to school. Are we going to let all these people fall by the wayside?

You know, Mr. Speaker, I did not come to the House of Commons yesterday. How many times have we heard it said in committee that we have to do something for minorities? And then came the question of how much it is going to cost us.

The Standing Committee on Official Languages has never travelled across the country to visit minority communities. Who has objected to that? Always the Conservatives. Do not tell me that it is not true, because it is true.

Last year, I was forced to make a proposal to the effect that if the Standing Committee on Official Languages did not travel, none of the committees would travel. If we can send 12 people across the country to see where seals live, we can send the Standing Committee on Official Languages to anglophone and francophone communities to find out what people need.

The Prime Minister had said that we should perhaps look at the system in Belgium, and he suggested that Quebec look after the francophones and the rest of Canada look after the anglophones. I was born in New Brunswick, on the Acadian Peninsula, and I am Canadian.

I want to obtain services in both official languages, like any English- or French-speaking Canadian. Anglophones should be able to obtain service in their mother tongue where they live.

Someone has said that no one was asking all the anglophones to learn French and all the francophones to learn English. People were asking the government to offer service in both official languages. It is not hard.

It was sad when Senator Jean-Robert Gauthier had to introduce Bill S-3 three times. The bill amended section 41 of part VII to make the obligations therein enforceable rather than declaratory. It applied to federal institutions, and the Bloc Québécois voted against the bill on the grounds that the government had no right to interfere in Quebec's areas of jurisdiction. However, at issue were areas of federal jurisdiction.

I am sorry, but we cannot rely on Quebec alone to defend francophones outside Quebec. Quebec showed in that instance that it had not defended them. This is a federal law that applies to federal institutions.

In committee I said to the Conservatives that I would have liked them to vote against Bill S-3 and then come and say to us that they support francophones. But even though I told them to vote against the bill they voted in favour. Now they think that, since they voted in favour of this bill, they can take away our right to appear in the various courts. That is what they did. They took our tools away from us.

Take the example of the Montfort Hospital, here in Ottawa. It was not just because someone was sick and bedridden at the hospital that they won that case. It was because organizations got together to fight for it. They used money from the court challenges program. That is when the case was won, thanks to the support and desire to help.

The government is a big machine and can become a dictatorship. It has the army on its side, the police on its side, it has everyone on its side in order to enforce the law. But in our democracy citizens get a chance to attend court. They are entitled to go to court and obtain judgment. Is the government right or not?

I will give some other examples. Take the example of electoral boundaries. In my riding this has caused some problems. They wanted to send some of the francophones from Acadie—Bathurst to Miramichi, where 70% of the constituents are anglophone. Thanks to a court decision, that did not happen. In the history of Canada, that was the first time a boundary was changed by the court. The association of municipalities managed to do that with money from the court challenges program. Without that money, which boat would we have missed, what direction would we have taken?

Here is another example. This morning at the Standing Committee on Official Languages we tried to pass a motion recommending that the government give back the money to the court challenges program. The only party that voted against this was the Conservative Party.

This is unbelievable and unacceptable! Let us hope that it will change and that Canadians recognize it.

We have a beautiful country. But we must not deceive ourselves—it is not just about francophones and anglophones; it is about power. That is the problem. It is dangerous to give too much power to a government. It is dangerous not to challenge its decisions, its interpretations or the directions it takes.

To say that Liberal lawyers make a lot of money from that is wrong, completely wrong. How much work has Michel Doucet, a professor at the University of Moncton, done for us? How much responsibility has he taken on to defend francophones and minorities, without charging them anything?

It was only for the court costs. How many hours of volunteer work did Michel Doucet of the Université de Moncton give freely? Thank you, Michel for what you have done on behalf of these communities.

Today the Conservatives want to do away with that but we are not going to sit here in our seats without speaking out. We are going to fight for this. We will not accept that here in our country we cannot defend ourselves after laws have been passed, laws that are badly interpreted and not respected.

They are not compelled to misinterpret legislation. If they do not respect it, if they do not do anything, the law and the courts give us the tools to force the government to do something. The fact of having services is just as significant for anglophone minorities in those places where francophones form a majority. It is not asking too much to be able to speak with your doctor in the language of your choice when you are sick. If you are having your appendix removed, it is to be hoped that the doctors will not remove your spleen. We must have access to these services. This morning at the Standing Committee on Official Languages we talked about the importance of ensuring that patients can receive services in the language of their choice in our hospitals. It is not too much to ask.

As I have said, we are not asking that all anglophones become francophones, nor that all francophones should become anglophones. We are asking that services be provided, that the Official Languages Act of our country be respected, and if it is not respected, we want the tools to go before the courts, before judges appointed by the government. We want to ask for the opinion of the court. That is democracy. What would it be without access to the courts?

We are sending out soldiers to fight in Afghanistan to promote democracy, and in our own country we are abolishing it. It is a disgrace. In our own country we are cutting funding for the status of women but we are going into Afghanistan because we want Afghan women to have rights. We cut funding in Canada. Is that not hypocrisy?

It is an insult, as the member for Québec properly described it earlier. We went to Romania for the summit of la Francophonie. How could the Prime Minister stand up and say that he supports the Francophonie? At the same time he was cutting all the existing powers that enable minority communities in Canada to live the Francophonie.

The wife of the Prime Minister of Canada took part in a walk in support of people with literacy problems. Two days later, her husband cut off funding for literacy. Where does that leave us?

The communities are hurting. We are getting phone calls about that. We are meeting people back home. Anyone who has not contacted Conservative MPs yet should know that there are toll-free numbers they can use. They can phone them; those numbers are at their disposal. If people are happy with all that is happening and want an American-style system, let them rejoice because it is on the way, well on the way. Once it is done, they will wonder why.

I know that the Conservatives will insist that they are not like that, that they invested money everywhere. The fact is that they are individualistic.Take what they did with child care. To keep the public quiet, they announced they would be providing a $1,200 benefit. But there is still no child care system. The American style is making its way into Canada. Whatever people say, this is a Bush-league style of work.

If Canada were problem-free, there would be no need for the Francophonie and official languages department and its minister. Besides, that portfolio was not even given to a person who speaks both official languages. That is adding insult to injury. When the time came to appoint a parliamentary secretary, it took the government three months to appoint one. This shows how important official languages are to this government.

Nevertheless, this is our country, and we have to show one another respect; anglophones and francophones have to show each other respect. We are all human beings. We are just passing through on earth and we should be able to get along. There are countries where people speak five or six languages and they respect one another much more than we do here, in this country. In some countries, the battles are apparently about religion or race; here, they are about language.

We should set all of that aside and work together toward making our country a better place to live, one of the greatest in the world.

Official Languages

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, the court challenges program allowed francophone and anglophone communities to assume their proper place, which is rightfully theirs, within Canada.

How does the Prime Minister plan to implement Bill S-3, which obliges the federal government and its agencies to comply with the Official Languages Act and allow minority communities to bring legal action against the government when violations occur, to ensure that their rights are protected?

Government Programs

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, this Conservative government made cuts without any debate, without any consultation.

More than 12 programs essential to the development of francophone and Acadian communities will be seriously affected, including programs for literacy and court challenges.

This is quite a shock for all minority communities.

What about Bill S-3, which was supported by the Conservatives at the time and aimed to strengthen the government's obligation to respect and promote the Official Languages Act?

And what about the 29 unresolved complaints?

The Conservative government has placed minority communities at the bottom of its agenda.

The NDP and the organizations affected by these cuts demand explanations and immediate action to re-establish funding for the survival of these programs and our francophone communities.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in other words, they do not give a damn about minorities.

Last November, the ultra-Conservatives voted in favour of Bill S-3. It enabled communities to go to the courts if the government failed to meet its obligations.

Yesterday, however, in doing away with the court challenges program, the Conservative extremists deprived communities of the means to defend themselves and have their rights upheld. The Conservatives are taking away with one hand what they give with the other.

Why did they cut this program? Is it because they think they are above the law or is it just because they simply do not give a damn about the various communities?