As you say, we often play the role of missionaries; there is no doubt about that. That is part of the job, and when you are Franco-Ontarians living in a minority situation, you simply accept that. It must be the same thing in the East.
It's important to understand how the federal government's support is secured. I was actually talking about this with Ms. Verner recently.
In Timmins, for example, I am trying to put in place the necessary infrastructure to provide training in French in the trades. Timmins is a city that is growing, or continuing to grow. At the present time, I have no facilities there. Everyone believes that this project will be a real challenge.
There is one way of obtaining assistance that worked in the past. That was when the federal government would say to the provincial government — I witnessed this when I was at the Cité collégiale, and I've also witnessed it here, at the Collège Boréal — that it believes in training trades people, that this makes sense, and that it might be prepared to invest in an apprenticeship fund. So we go and talk to officials at the provincial level, we apply some pressure, and the provincial government tells us that if we develop a project for the trades, the federal government might be willing to support it. I say “the trades”, but that could include the health care sector or something else. It worked in the past, because all of a sudden the provincial government reacted, saying that because the federal government was there to provide support, it, too, would do something.
That's the kind of situation we are trying to reproduce in Timmins at the present time, in cooperation with Ms. Verner, so that we can secure support for a project aimed at training at least 400 apprentices per year in Northern Ontario in the mines sector, as well as others.
This is a solution that allows each level of government to take some of the credit. So, it is worth being persistent.