Parents who want access to such schools must fight for this right. As I have shown you, it takes seven years before a case is heard before the Supreme Court, where we can claim our rights. The Court Challenges Program gave us the wings we needed to claim what we are entitled to. As parents, we were not able to have these rights recognized for an entire generation of children. When we needed a high school, and the province refused to build one for us, we had a lot of work to do. Ultimately, we went before the courts, but during this entire time, our children graduated from English schools without attending classes in French.
What resulted from this situation is that many children who attended English school now have difficulty speaking and writing French. For us, it is very important to continue fighting to acquire what should automatically be granted to us, since this is built into the law. We shouldn't even have to resort to the Court Challenges Program. Nonetheless, this has never been the case. We had to fight.
As I was telling you, it took us seven years to obtain two schools in Manitoba and Alberta. The same occurred in British Columbia. I have lived in all three provinces, and I went through all the steps. I can assure you that I have no idea as to whether or not my lawyers were Liberals, Conservatives, or New Democrats. I hired them on the basis that they were well versed in constitutional matters and that they had defended other cases.
We talk about linguistic duality, but where are we going to find bilingual people?