Yes.
I also have a legal background and I'm also trying to learn French here as a member of Parliament.
I'm thinking of the experience in British Columbia, if I'm someone born and raised in British Columbia and I make law my career, with my goal being to invest in my province. Yet somewhere along the line, someone tells me about the only way I could ever aspire to the highest court in the land. They tell me that not only am I going to have to get my schooling outside British Columbia, but I'm also going to have to immerse myself in a legal setting outside British Columbia, because we don't have a French environment in British Columbia. So inordinate periods of time will be spent outside my province, the one that I'm committed to serving.
As you know, the reason we have judges from across Canada is to reflect the regions, yet I won't be able to reflect my region on the highest court in the land because I'm going to have to spend so much time outside my province to get to that language capacity I require, which is an incredibly high one, based on my reading of Bill C-232. You can see the struggle I have.
It's not a matter of supporting bilingualism or not. The level of language capacity required under this bill is incredibly high because it involves technical legal matters. Especially in British Columbia and Alberta, the pool from which Supreme Court judges could be selected is very small. We have bilingual lawyers in British Columbia, but at the level that's required under this bill, it's a very, very small pool.