For 40 years, the francophone communities inside and outside Quebec have been transformed, not just psychologically but also economically, from the status of a minority into an integrative society.
I think that at the moment, immigrants to Canada have a genuine choice about integrating into the francophone community, obviously in Quebec, but also in a place like Toronto, for example, where more and more francophones who arrive from other countries send their children to French schools.
For the first time, minority communities outside Quebec, which have always defined themselves as traditional French-Canadian communities, are seeing newcomers from other countries and other cultures. This can be somewhat of a challenge for communities that have always defined themselves as independent and hermetic to some extent; they have to open up their institutions, their schools to people who are not descendants of the original French settlers. That is a change that has been happening in Quebec since the introduction of Bill 101 in the 70s. And now it is a challenge facing minority communities in the rest of the country.
I know that the Acadian community has made some efforts to encourage immigrants to come to New Brunswick. Now that we have a network of French schools not just in Quebec but throughout the country, the challenge is to welcome these francophones who arrive from other countries.
I have always been struck by the fact that with the changes to the language law in Quebec, in 25 years, that province managed to do what it took English-speaking America 150 years to do: namely, to accept that their language would be spoken, with an accent, by others.
When I came to Quebec in the 60s, as soon as people heard my accent, they spoke to me in English. Now, it is accepted that people can speak French with an accent. It is accepted that French is a public language, and not just a private code used by a minority. I think that this a very important evolution of society, and it has not happened just in Quebec.