Thank you very much.
I'm quite supportive of the intent of the motion. It's consistent with the amendment that we presented to Bill C-19. Of course, I do want to echo comments that have been made already. I mean, it would be nice to see this coming directly from government. I would rather study it in the context of a bill. I think there is enough knowledge out there. Indigenous peoples have been here and speaking their languages long before Canada was an entity. It's not a mystery that they're here. It's not a mystery that they have their own languages. I think we're finally coming to a place as a country where we're willing to acknowledge that instead of trying to erase that reality.
It's really just a question of a concrete proposal for legislative change. We tried to make that change when it came to Bill C-19, because it appeared to be a way to do it. We know that there will already be a lot of barriers to voting as a result of the pandemic.
With the caveat that I really would like to see the government come forward with something.... If we're not going to be studying this until the fall anyway, that's a lot of time for the government to draft a bill and bring it forward in the fall. That would be [Technical difficulty—Editor] to a simple committee study that doesn't have the ability to then go ahead and enact, in legislation, whatever the conclusions of our study might be.
I'm certainly prepared to support this study, but I would really like to see some leadership from the government in getting it going so that at the end of the study we're changing the law instead of recommending to government that they go away, take more time to figure out how they might draft an amendment, and then have to study it all over again.