Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My thanks also to the Minister and his colleagues for joining us.
Allow me to correct some of the Minister's comments, or at least to describe them as I see them.
The Minister does not want this bill to become a partisan issue and he wants us to recognize its urgency. I would like to inform him that the committee unanimously agreed to fast-track consideration of this bill, despite the perfectly legitimate privilege that members of Parliament have to express their views in the House of Commons and to ask questions about the bill. I remind him that the Liberal government took five years to introduce this bill. It also prorogued Parliament, which set back consideration of important bills such as this one on broadcasting. We are in full agreement on the principle. If it is not too much to ask, I would like the minister to be a little circumspect at the moment, rather than trying to lecture to us as he is doing now.
With that said, yes, he is right: we actually did receive a notice buried in a document, several pages long, containing exactly the same information that had been given to us: that the calculation had been done using scenarios. I would like to tell the Minister that his Deputy Minister, Ms. Laurendeau, took the time at that same meeting to say that it would be important to provide explanations when the document was submitted, because it was supposedly complex. So I feel that there has been some confusion. I will grant him that we certainly received the information, but nothing was very precise. Once more, we are going to have to wait for the guidelines from the CRTC.
I would like to return to this bill; it is so important but it does not consider a number of factors. As the Minister himself said in his presentation, the bill nowhere deals with hate speech or revenue-sharing. Social media are not included in the bill. Despite the urgency and the consultations by the CRTC, nothing has yet been done to review the role that CBC/Radio-Canada has to play. Therefore, many questions arise.
When the Minister of Official Languages tabled her working document, her supposed white paper, she spoke to us about the importance of French and the importance that the government sees in promoting and defending it. She said that French would have a major role in broadcasting, and a lot of hard work was going to be done.
However, when we look at Bill C-10, that deals mostly with the digital players, we realize that the only measure designed to enhance the place of French, to promote it and to ensure French-language content, is to remove the words “as resources become available” at the end of paragraph 3(1)(k) of the act. It now simply reads that “a range of broadcasting services in French and in English shall be progressively extended to all Canadians”.
It seems to me that the bill provides for nothing substantial in this regard. However, the Minister told us that, for her, French is important and that she was going to make sure that it would be a factor in all departments. Now here we are studying this bill that we have been waiting for for more than 30 years. According to the Minister and his senior officials, the bill is historic. But it contains only one single item that deals with protecting French.
How do you respond to all the organizations that are concerned about the place of French in Acadia, in Quebec and in the French-speaking communities outside Quebec? I am not talking about quotas; don't try to tell me that there are quotas.