Thank you very much for being here. I appreciate your presentations. As the chair of the committee mentioned, we're from all parties. We work together on official languages because as a government we want to ensure that our initiatives are in fact taking root on the ground and that they're yielding positive results.
We also want to hear about the challenges you face. I want to thank you, in particular, for sharing both with us--for sharing your successes with us and for sharing your challenges with us. As a federal politician, it's always good to hear how federal money, which tends to be way up here, actually makes its way down to communities and helps in communities.
I also like the way you're working together. You had a very strong message on the health system, on the advances that have been made with respect to health. You spoke about it as well in your presentation on the townships. So what I see are different organizations actually working together on the same initiatives, and that's yielding even better results. So I congratulate you on that teamwork.
One of the questions I have is regarding the townships and local community associations. I imagine that you have them. I was just looking through the action plan. And in Quebec, the federal government spent $4 million to help minority associations to, probably, deliver services in French. We have also announced an increase, another $120 million over 20 years, specifically for that, as well as $64 million for the delivery of minority language services.
Can you tell me what sorts of associations you have in the townships? Are they benefiting, once again, from our federal initiatives, or from the government's federal initiatives? And what sorts of challenges do you have with respect to the associations?