Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Godin, for that excellent question.
I will briefly give you some background.
People are often under the impression that the Bloc Québécois speaks only for Quebec. The Bloc Québécois speaks on behalf of Quebec culture, but also on behalf of French in general. As you pointed out, we in Quebec are like a Gaulish village. We are eight million francophones in an ocean of 360 million to 370 million anglophones. We need to protect this distinctiveness. After all, Quebec, as you said, is like the Gaulish village.
However, beyond this Gaulish village, there are other communities, and they're important too. When we are considering a bill or a measure that might be applied to Quebec, we think about the francophone communities outside of Quebec because we are often in touch with them and discuss these issues.
Adding the other provinces was a way of telling the francophone communities outside of Quebec that we weren't only thinking about Quebec. We know that they too are concerned about regulations and decisions pertaining to French that are issued by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, the CRTC, and these communities should also have a say in these matters.
We were just talking about consulting the provinces. I think that might not be obligatory. Some provinces might say that they don't want to be consulted, and that would be the end of it. It's no more complicated than that. I thought it was important to let the francophone communities outside of Quebec know that in introducing this proposed amendment to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission Act, we were not just thinking about ourselves. We were thinking about all francophones in Canada.