Those were excellent questions and excellent answers.
My colleagues have been kind enough to let me be the questioner for the Liberals on this round because I am from an official language minority. I just wanted to add, in response to the QCGN response, that as a former mayor of a community in Quebec, I think there is a major distinction between the way the English-speaking communities in Quebec have issues versus francophone communities outside Quebec.
One example would be bilingual status. If you are not a municipality where the English-speaking community makes up the majority in Quebec, your municipality is banned, by law, from adopting bylaws in both languages. You're not able to work in English within the municipality. You're not able to send out bilingual communications. You're not allowed to erect bilingual signs. So even if English-speaking people are 45% of your community, the Quebec law bans you from putting up signs in both languages. Ontario has a very good law that sets a certain number.
I'm not sure but I think it's 5% or 10% of the population of Ontario, with a threshold of 5,000. In light of this, there really has to be bilingual status in Quebec. Bilingualism is prohibited if anglophones do not make up a majority in the community. This is very problematic.
On the question of signs, as they said, it's mostly government signs. A hospital that doesn't have a majority of English-speaking users is unable to put up bilingual signs, which has caused problems in many small English-speaking communities in the Gaspé peninsula and other parts of Quebec.
Personally, I am delighted that the FCFA and the QCGN have worked together on these recommendations. It's very important for all official language minority communities in Canada to work together. I also have some questions for you in that regard.
If I understand correctly, you would like the CCP to be expanded to apply not only to the language rights set out in the charter but indeed to all federal laws relating to language. Do you think we should allow provincial laws to be challenged under this program? Did a witness recommend that? Do you think we should expand its scope to include not only federal laws but also provincial laws that undermine language rights?
I would like to hear first from the FCFA and then from the QCGN.