Now I would like to address immigration and immigrants.
As you said earlier, one third of the population of New Brunswick is francophone, but most of those francophones live in a rural setting. When it comes to health care, it is always a challenge to attract professionals to work in remote areas. We had a group of witnesses a few weeks ago and I asked them about the expectations of health professionals; they will be getting back to me on that. How do you attract them to rural francophone areas and how do you get them to stay?
I believe that you said, earlier, that 1 per cent of francophone immigrants settle outside Quebec. That is a low number. In light of your studies, do you think that is because they are afraid that they wont receive the services they require in their own language? Perhaps they are unilingual francophones who decide against considering other provinces to settle in because of concerns about receiving services in their own language. So they chose Quebec, a region that is universally recognized as being French, which is not the case for other provinces.
There are still people in Canada who don't understand that one third of the population of New Brunswick is French-speaking. During my first term as a member here in Ottawa, even fellow parliamentarians expressed surprise that I spoke French since I came from New Brunswick. People are often unaware of that fact. And if parliamentarians don't know, then I imagine there are others who are equally ignorant of that fact.
So do you think there might be a relationship between this misconception and the low 1 per cent immigration rate?