Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I absolutely support my colleague's motion on bilingualism. I am quite disappointed to hear that the Conservatives are not going to support an amendment that would safeguard this element in the bill.
Ms. Glover said there was some openness to the idea that it might be more important to give more weight to the person's skills and abilities. If we accept that position, we are to some extent accepting what has happened in the past. What we should do is learn from our mistakes. We've seen the appointment of an auditor general who speaks only one of the official languages and who doesn't understand the other. We've seen that mistake happen.
All this amendment does is really confirm what Ms. Glover was saying, in other words, that the government is committed to protecting official languages, which include French. All we are trying to do is make sure that's included in the bill.
We've seen what can actually happen, we've seen the problem. We've also seen this same government appoint unilingual judges to the Supreme Court. Not accepting this amendment just shows that the government is not committed to safeguarding official languages in Canada.