I appreciate the question. That's why I spent the majority of my speaking time on the issue. It's probably the biggest issue that I have with the bill. This is one of my areas of scholarly research, and the concern that I have is that at this time we have no comprehensive support system in Canada to develop, implement and support immersion education from preschool to grade 12. Every immersion school or preschool that exists in Canada right now has been done absolutely by bootstraps, by the hard work, blood, sweat and tears, and by the sheer will of those communities, and sometimes by working around very difficult existing policies.
That's why I brought forward Jordan's principle. It might be controversial, but I stand by the comparison with Jordan's principle. I think we have the same issue in education. We have a jurisdictional overlap and complexities that indigenous children's rights should supersede. We need a more comprehensive support system for indigenous communities to ensure the right to educate our children in their languages.
I found the bill to be quite silent on that issue. In the couple of clauses that I picked up on I'm just concerned that the bill has this equation between indigenous rights and complying with provincial jurisdictions, which in regard to indigenous language education has gotten us nowhere, and in fact has been a huge hindrance. I could speak to you after this session for a long time about how that has been the case province by territory.