That's so generous of you, Mr. Chair. Thank you.
Mr. Simoneau, I was able to do some cross-checks. First of all, we were talking about the Canadian Armed Forces earlier, not the public service. I will reiterate some of the findings of the review.
First, 63% of forces members in bilingual positions requiring an intermediate level of second-language proficiency did not meet the language profile required for their position. Second, 26.3% of the 4,732 francophone members in positions designated as “English essential” did not have an intermediate level of English proficiency.
Furthermore, 76.9% of the 1,026 anglophone members of the forces in positions designated as “French essential” did not have an intermediate level of French proficiency. In addition, 87.7% of the professions within the forces did not have enough bilingual members to meet staffing needs.
Finally, and this is where the problem lies, there's a retention issue, and this comes at a time when the forces are looking to increase their personnel. Each year, they expect to lose approximately 1,347 members with a valid language profile.
I remind you that we're talking about the forces and not the public service.
So I'm going to ask you a vague but evocative question: How is that possible?