The mandatory long-form questionnaire of 2006 and previous years contains questions of a linguistic nature that are very important for the francophone and acadian communities and the anglophone communities of Quebec. These questions allows to measure the vitality of the communities and are used in the preparation of programs and services. I am not only talking about the federal level, but also the provincial level, since there are transfer payments and the provinces use these data.
We feel that the government's decision breaches section 20 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as well as the Official Languages Act, in that there has not been any consultation, and the regulations under part IV of the act as they are worded today are entirely based on the language questions contained in the long form.
After the 2011 census, there will be an office designation exercise. A decision will be made as to whether offices are to be designated bilingual, whether here or in my organization. We will not have the data since these questions will no longer be asked. We may have some data, but no one can tell us now whether we will have at our disposal regional data of this nature.
Thus, if the number of citizens who answer the questions in a small community such as Falher or St. Isidore-de-Bellevue is not sufficient, we will not have any data for that region.