Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I have listened carefully to your arguments, both positive and negative. I have listened carefully and I fully understand, coming from Quebec.
You referred to subsection 16(1), but also to paragraph 20(1)(a) of the Constitution Act, 1982, which states that “there is a significant demand for communications” in English or French. An application for Canadian citizenship is more than significant, it is very significant because the goal is to make you a true Canadian citizen.
Let me take you back to my riding of Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, which is north of Montreal, where there are exclusively English-speaking permanent residents with links to people from the United States.
Many of my fellow constituents who became Canadian citizens told me that it was very difficult to pass the exam and that it required a lot of preparation. If a person has to choose between French and English when they are not fluent in French, it is difficult for them. They all told me that it was already difficult to pass the exam in either of the two languages.
If anglophones in Quebec are not allowed to take their citizenship test in English, will they have to go outside Quebec to do so? Is that the other possibility?
Let's say that I am a permanent francophone resident living outside Quebec, but not in New Brunswick, the only bilingual province. I am elsewhere and the same thing, only in reverse, happens to me. Will I have to take my exam in English when we know that the exam is very difficult and requires a lot of preparation?
You used the words “clearly, likely, could”, but I don't know where the line is drawn. Let me go back to what paragraph 20(1)(a) of the Constitution Act, 1982, says: “there is a significant demand for communications” in English or French. In my opinion, an application to become a Canadian citizen is one of the most significant communications with the federal government.