Our brief outlines some of the legal issues. I will simply mention the Court Challenges Program which I am sure you are familiar with. This is an issue that the Centre francophone de Toronto is very concerned about. We have a legal aid clinic that attempts to represent the interests of the franco-Torontonian community. This community needs this program. Therefore, we are calling on the federal government to reconsider its decision to end its funding.
There is another important issue. As I mentioned, our clientele is mainly made up of immigrants. Our legal aid clinic offers services related to immigration and refugee status. We have noted a significant deterioration in the French language services provided by the Immigration and Refugee Board in Toronto. The Board has increasingly been referring those francophone clients who wish to obtain refugee status, to its Montreal office. Therefore, these individuals now have to attend their hearings via video-conferences.
We recently made an access to information request in order to determine how many members of the francophone community were being referred to the Board's Montreal office, compared to the anglophone community and we noted a huge discrepancy. We believe that this seriously harms the refugee status claims process. Therefore, we are asking the federal government to consider this situation, with a view to restricting the amount of video-conferencing imposed on these very vulnerable people in Canada. It is also our intention to lay a complaint with the Official Languages Commission over the next few days. I simply wanted to mention this to you.