Thank you.
I would now like to ask you a few questions about another subject that I informed you about earlier, the use of French at the immigration board in Montreal.
For several years, there have been lawyers who have criticized the decisions of the Immigration and Refugee Board, the IRB, for preventing them from practising in French and serving their clients in French. A number of cases have arisen in the past. There are still some underway at present.
When those lawyers are dissatisfied with the decision of the IRB, because it goes against the use of French, your Department always attacks those arguments in the Federal Court of Canada. Your Department is quite simply involved in legalistic guerilla warfare against the use of French in Montreal.
I have myself had the opportunity, and I won't say it was the good luck, to attend one of those hearings in Federal Court, where there were lawyers who were plainly very well-known and very numerous defending the IRB's decision. In those cases, for example, the issue was that documents were not translated into French, although the language of the proceedings had been changed to French.
Because we are considering appropriations, I would like to know whether you can inform the committee of the cost of this legalistic guerilla war. How much have you spent, in the Department, on legal fees, to make sure that things essentially continue to work in English in Montreal?