Thanks, Chair.
I want to briefly respond to Ms. Idlout, or perhaps try to understand.
I completely appreciate the commentary about the imposition of the languages as colonial. The lack of understanding I have is that, if you have a first nations community in Quebec that speaks French—which there are—we're not forcing anything on them. We're simply saying, “If you want to use the French language, you could.” The piece I don't get here is this. If that's our argument, we shouldn't use English, either. I'm trying to understand that. If the argument is that we can't provide French services because it's a colonial language, we shouldn't be able to provide English services. What would this mean for communities that only speak English?
This is not about opposition to understanding the colonial piece. I completely agree. It's about providing communities that want to operate in their language—whether that's an indigenous language, the French language or the English language—with the ability to do that.
That's perhaps where I'm not clear, Mr. Chair.
I have nothing further to add.