Mr. Murphy, first, I'm pleased to see that someone named Cyr strongly opposed that mayor of Moncton. I remember that time, which somewhat betrays my age. I was in Edmundston.
I'm going to answer your question in the affirmative. Absolutely, we have the role of showing that the Francophone population's presence does in fact have an economic impact. That's one of the things I very often say to our funding agencies. In our case, that's Western Economic Diversification Canada. They see us as a Community Futures organization. They recognize our Francophone community and the Francophone communities of Nelson and Nanaimo. They see the positive side in that.
When I meet our funding agencies and all our Anglophone counterparts, I remind them that we're lucky in Canada because we have two official languages, English and French. According to the polls and surveys, Chinese is the most widely spoken language in the world, and English is in second place. There are a lot of countries where English is the first language spoken, followed by French. English is the language of economic power, publishing power and political power. I note that that's what's revealed by the findings of the study that was conducted by some Americans, because a Quebecker might believe it's biased. So English and French are respectively the first and second languages of the world in terms of political and economic power.
There's something else that I always tell my Anglophone counterparts, and that's that, if we work together, we speak the two most powerful languages in the world in economic and political terms. So it's worth the trouble for us to work together: if there's one thing that Anglophones understand, it's the economy. So when we're able to show that our presence has an economic impact, suddenly we're accepted, not only because it's the law, but because we contribute something.
I agree with you: we have a duty to demonstrate that our presence has an impact. That's why I talked about impact in that sense in my presentation.
Thank you.