Official Languages Committee on Dec. 6th, 2006

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

Order, please.

First, I'd like to welcome you to the Standing Committee on Official Languages. For those who don't know me, my name is Yvon Godin, and I'm the member for Acadie—Bathurst, a riding in northeastern New Brunswick.

I'd like to introduce the members of the committee. They are Sylvie Boucher, parliamentary secretary to the Minister for Official Languages and La Francophonie, and Steven Blaney, both members of the party in power; the Honourable Raymond Simard and Brian Murphy, both members of the Liberal Party, which is the official opposition. I am the member for the New Democratic Party. The Bloc québécois isn't represented here this evening because Paule Brunelle had to leave early to go back to Parliament.

It's really a pleasure for us to be in the Winnipeg region. As you're no doubt aware, the Official Languages Committee has been in existence for 25 years. The committee has decided to do a national tour to meet people in the regions. We thought it was important to go into the field to see what was being done there and to meet with people. People don't always have the opportunity to travel to Ottawa to attend the committee's proceedings. We feel they're more comfortable talking to us when we're one their home ground than when they come to meet us in Ottawa.

I can tell you that the committee's tour has been profitable. The purpose of the tour was to hear organizations and people tell us about the 2003 Action Plan for Official Languages. Where does the plan stand? Has it been beneficial? How could it be improved? Do you have any recommendations to make in the areas of health, immigration or other official languages fields, such as the one represented by the Fédération des associations de juristes d'expression française de common law, which is here today?

Here's how we'll be proceeding. You each have a period of five minutes to make your presentation. You might say that five minutes isn't very much, but, as you'll see, with questions, that five minutes will be much longer. We're somewhat familiar with the official languages situation, but the purpose of the meeting is to ask you questions and then to prepare a report that we'll table in Parliament so that it can take a position on it.

Sylviane Lanthier has just arrived. We had planned to meet until 10:00 p.m., but I believe people will agree to adjourn the meeting at 9:00 p.m.

I've received a note stating that Michel Tétreault has to leave at 8:00 p.m. To give him a chance to speak, I invite members who have questions to ask him to do so once he has made his presentation. You have five minutes, and the members will also have five minutes to ask their questions and hear the answers.

We'll start with Charles Gagné, who is President of the Conseil communauté en santé du Manitoba.

[Charles Gagné, President, Conseil communauté en santé du Manitoba]

Thank you very much, Mr. Godin.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Chair, committee members. Thank you for agreeing to meet with us this evening so that we can tell you a little about the Conseil communauté en santé and about certain recent initiatives taken in Manitoba with the support of the Société Santé en français, which is located in Ottawa, and Health Canada.

In 2004, the Conseil communauté en santé was recognized by the provincial government as the official voice of the Francophone community on health and social services. The mandate of the Conseil communauté en santé, or CCS, is to promote access to quality French-language services in the areas of health and social services; to develop and promote the Franco-Manitoban community's vision of access to French-language services to the government bodies and organizations concerned; to propose, introduce and implement or support various strategies for the Franco-Manitoban community's vision for access to French-language health and social services to be implemented by the government bodies and organizations concerned.

Our board of directors consists of people who are partners, of various people responsible for health, whether it be health professionals, representatives of health institutions, representatives of the regional health authorities or people from the community. In other words, like Société Santé en français, the CCS considers itself a partner of the provincial government, the regional health authorities and social service agencies for the purpose of advancing the cause of health in French.

It is this cooperative approach that has made possible, here at home, six actual projects that are improving access, on a sustainable basis, to quality services in French for our Franco-Manitoban population. With funding from the Primary Health Care Transition Fund, these projects are real proof that, together, we are improving access to quality French-language services in the areas of health and social services. Let me say a few words on each of those projects to illustrate my remarks.

The first project is called Cancer and cancer prevention: toward services for Francophones, because there were few French-language services in this area. The purpose of this project is to put in place cancer prevention and treatment services and programs for the urban and rural Francophone population.

The second project is the project for primary health centres in Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes, Saint-Claude and Montcalm, which are three rural Manitoban communities, and its purpose is to introduce a health centre that will deliver bilingual health services for the residents of Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes and surrounding areas. Construction of the centre is part of a broader project designed to improve access to health care services for Francophones in the region, which includes establishing satellite centres in the communities of Saint-Claude and Saint-Jean-Baptiste, as well as the introduction of a mobile multidisciplinary team that will serve the three locations.

The third project, which is the Francophone component of the provincial Health Links/Info Santé Call Centre, is one of the promising projects. The introduction of the Francophone component of a telephone health information service provides access to a nurse practitioner and health information 24 hours a day.

The purpose of the fourth project, the coordination of health services in Saint-Laurent, is to put in place a coordination model for improving access to primary health services for the Francophone Métis of Saint-Laurent. Saint-Laurent is the largest Francophone Métis community in Manitoba which is just next door to western Canada. This work has been assigned to a bilingual nurse who is part of a team already providing services.

The fifth project that I would like to mention is planning and development of a primary health services model for the Saint-Boniface region. The purpose of the project is essentially to create a health and social services delivery model adapted to the Francophones of Winnipeg and to develop a plan to respond more effectively to needs for premises, programs and services at the Saint-Boniface Health Centre.

I'd like to mention one final project, the French-language primary health network. The idea here is to establish community health centres in two areas with large numbers of Francophones. These centres will enable the clientele of southeastern Manitoba to obtain primary health services in French, including health promotion and disease prevention services.

It is clear to us that these six achievements would not have been possible without investment by Health Canada and the support of Société Santé en français, two major institutions or organizations for the introduction of these services. We hope we'll be able to obtain your committee's support so that we can continue the work of improving services in our Francophone communities. As you can see, we've made an excellent start over the past two years, but it's only a start.

We're ready to answer your questions.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

Thank you, Mr. Gagné. We'll continue with Sylviane Lanthier.

[Sylviane Lanthier, Director and Editor in Chief, La Liberté]

Thank you. I filed a document for you that we're going to distribute to you after the meeting, if I understood correctly. I'm going to read it to you so that everyone has the information.

First of all, thank you for inviting me to be with you today. Thanks in advance as well for your attention to my presentation, the purpose of which is to prove three points: first, that La Liberté is an essential instrument necessary to maintaining the community's vitality; second, that the newspaper is facing specific challenges to its ability to continue carrying out its mission; third, that the federal government can play a larger role in supporting papers like La Liberté in their development efforts.

I said that La Liberté was an essential instrument in maintaining vitality. The presence of a French-language newspaper in a minority community is virtually a barometer of its vitality. The more self-sufficient a community is in a number of respects, the more it is able to have one or more newspapers serving it in French.

In Canada, the minority press situation is complex and diversified, but, in all cases, the existence of a newspaper is seen as an essential tool to the development of that community.

In Manitoba, the French-language newspaper is called La Liberté. It was founded in 1913. Since 1970, it's been published by Presse-Ouest Limitée, with a seven-person board of directors. Presse-Ouest itself is a private company and a subsidiary of Société franco-manitobaine. So this is an arrangement that has made the newspaper a real private for-profit company, but with a strong community affiliation. La Liberté is, in all respects, the newspaper of the Franco-Manitoban community, and the mission of its staff is to produce the best possible newspaper every week, thus providing the best service to that community. Our goal is to establish the best balance among all the aspects of the management of a newspaper in order to offer our clientele a high-quality product. La Liberté has a staff of seven persons, plus two people who work on special projects. We also publish the Journal des jeunes 10 times a year.

A survey conducted in May by the CROP firm of Montreal showed how important the newspaper is for the Francophone community: for example, when asked how important the newspaper was for the Francophones of their region, readers rated its importance 9.3 out of 10. It also appears from that survey that the readership of La Liberté is faithful and committed to its newspaper, that it reads it every week and spends an average of 31 minutes doing so. More than 90 percent said the newspaper's various headlines interested them. More than 90 percent of readers thus tell us they read the news concerning Manitoba, concerning Francophones, cultural news, etc. But the survey also shows that that readership gets very little news in French. Manitoba Francophones watch more English-language television, listen to more English-language radio, read more English-language books and surf the Internet more in English than they do in French. There are obvious reasons for this behaviour that are directly related to the influence of the society in which they live. However, this finding shows how the community newspaper is even more important. The paper is a genuine and essential link with French-language culture and, in certain cases, is the only link these people have left. La Liberté is thus a privileged way for them to get informed in French and a window on their own community life.

Readers read La Liberté the way you gather news about family members. That's true because, last week, I was at the home of one of our advertising clients, who told me he had looked through the paper and seen pictures of 14 people he knew. That's what people do when they read a newspaper like ours.

We're lucky to have the support of our readers, but we're also in a precarious position, because the conditions in which we produce the paper are getting tougher from year to year. Maintaining the paper's tradition of excellence requires an ever greater effort. La Liberté is facing the same challenges as the majority newspapers, or the dailies, that is to say greater competition for the advertising market, constant changes in the technologies with which we produce the paper, the presence of the Internet, ongoing expenses for technological updating, the need to plan intelligent marketing strategies to preserve and expand our markets, increasing difficulty in recruiting and retaining staff, increasing difficulty remaining competitive in the job market. When we go to conferences and occasionally meet people who publish newspapers like ours, but for majority groups, that is to say Anglophones who publish weekly or daily newspapers, they talk about exactly the same concerns as ours. The difference is that, in dealing with these problems like everyone else, we have fewer resources. The following seem to be the most strategic areas for securing the newspaper's future, and we want to address them over the next few years.

There are human resources and staff training. La Liberté doesn't have the financial resources to be competitive in the job market. We have significant staff turnover.

For example, the starting salary for a journalist has increased by barely $2,000 since 1990, whereas the cost of living has risen sharply.

La Liberté doesn't have the necessary financial flexibility to provide regular and adequate annual pay increases or to hire more staff.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

You have one minute left.

[Sylviane Lanthier]

We also have problems with revenue sources, technological innovation and knowledge of the industry. We also have to address other issues, how to keep our youth readership, in particular. These are issues of interest to us to which we have to find answers.

What role can the federal government play in helping newspapers like ours? As you very well know, we can tell you—and we often do—about the federal government's advertising expenses and the fact that we not only want placements, we especially want fair placements when government agencies plan their campaigns. I could also tell you about the Publications Assistance Program. In fact, Canada Post is threatening to cancel this program, which could result in an additional bill of $25,000 in postage for La Liberté .

In addition, the federal government is making other programs available to certain sectors of the communications industry, such as television and magazines, for which a fund exists. Perhaps equivalents of these programs could be found to assist the minority Francophone press. Currently, there are no government programs tailor-made for the Francophone press, to support its development, in areas, for example, such as assistance for human resources, operations, or a technological adjustment fund. Perhaps the government should try to see how it could assist the development of a press that is necessary for the vitality of the communities.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

Thank you.

Now we'll hear from Louise Aucoin, President of the Fédération des associations de juristes d'expression française de common law.

[Louise Aucoin, President, Federation of Associations of French-speaking Jurists of Common Law]

Good evening, Mr. Chair and gentlemen members of the committee.

My name is Louise Aucoin, and I am the President of the Fédération des associations de juristes d'expression française de common law, the FAJEF. I'm here this evening with Rénald Rémillard, our Executive Director here in Winnipeg.

FAJEF represents seven associations of French-speaking jurists representing nearly 1,200 jurists. FAJEF promotes and defends the language rights of the Francophone minority in the administration of justice in Canada. We sincerely thank you for inviting us to testify before your committee on the impact of the 2003 Action Plan for Official Languages and our expectations of the federal government with regard to the future.

FAJEF firmly believes that the action plan has had real and positive results in the justice sector. To start with, provincial and federal stakeholders are more aware of the importance of access to justice in French. Through briefs, meetings and presentations, FAJEF and its network has increased the awareness of stakeholders such as the RCMP and other police departments, legal aid services, provincial ministries of justice and the federal department of justice of the issue of French in the justice sector. Works remains to be done, of course, but the question of access to justice has a distinctly higher profile and is definitely being discussed more now than in 2002.

FAJEF and its network have also made Francophone and Acadian leaders and members of the general public, as well as major association stakeholders such as the Canadian Bar Association and the Public Legal Association of Canada, aware of the importance of access to justice in French.

The action plan has had the following results: a revitalization of FAJEF and its network; the appointment of a number of bilingual judges; legal training is now offered in French in a number of regions of Canada; legal work instruments are now being prepared in French for practitioners; the promotion of careers in law and justice; the promotion of legal services in French to Francophone litigants; more legal popularization in French and significant networking with Anglophone and Quebec legal associations such as Éducaloi.

In addition, Quebec's new policy on Canadian Francophonie has stated that justice is a new target sector.

We believe that this progress, which we consider significant, would not have been achieved without the action plan. FAJEF and its network want to take advantage of the momentum created by the plan in the justice sector. For this reason, we will now tell you about our expectations of the Government of Canada for the future.

We want the federal government to comply with Part VII of the new Official Languages Act, specifically the two-part commitment stated in section 41.

The first component of that commitment is to enhance the vitality of the Anglophone and Francophone minorities and to support their development, while the second component is to foster the full recognition and use of English and French in Canadian society. By promoting and normalizing the use of French in the justice sector in Canada and in the Francophone communities, FAJEF and its network are contributing to the two components of the federal government's commitment.

How can the federal government manage to meet that commitment or, as we say in the legal community, take positive measures to that effect?

First, by granting adequate funding so that we and our partners can continue to contribute to the development of the Francophone communities and to enhance the recognition and use of French in Canadian society as a whole in the justice sector. Second, by restoring funding for the Court Challenges Program. Surprise, surprise!

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

I almost felt like saying: “Oh, oh, Familiprix!”, but instead I'll say: “Oh, oh, the Conservative cuts!”

Sorry, I couldn't help myself. Continue.

[Louise Aucoin]

The facts show that this is an essential tool for fully carrying out both components of the federal government's commitment under the Official Languages Act, including in the justice sector.

Those are my comments. I'll be pleased to answer your questions.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

Thank you, Ms. Aucoin.

Now we'll hear from Michel Tétreault from the Hôpital général Saint-Boniface.

[Dr. Michel Tétreault, President and CEO, St-Boniface General Hospital]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and gentlemen members of the committee.

I wear more than one hat in this city, including that of President and CEO of the Hôpital général Saint-Boniface and that of Assistant to the Executive Director of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority with regard to French-language services for the entire Winnipeg region. I won't go back to 1871 and tell you that the Hôpital Saint-Boniface was the first hospital established west of Ontario. It was originally a four-bed hospital in a Francophone community, of course. It subsequently developed, but it was not until 1989-1990 that it officially received a mandate to provide French-language services to the population of Saint-Boniface and Saint-Vital. It was also the main hospital for Manitoba Francophones who went to it.

In 1999, when the Regional Health Authority was created, the hospital was officially given a mandate to actively offer French-language services to the Francophones of Winnipeg, particularly those of Saint-Boniface and Saint-Vital. The strategy used by the regional health authority was to target primary services in the Francophone community and in places like the Winnipeg Children's Hospital, which was the only hospital providing services for children in the city. The hospital was designated potentially bilingual at that time.

Since 2001, we've had a French-language services coordinator for the Winnipeg region. She has her office at the Hôpital général Saint-Boniface. However, it wasn't until 2006 that resources were available to support that person, including a second coordinator and secretarial assistance. During that period, that is in the past six years, there have been some achievements, a new general policy on French-language services, the designation of bilingual positions, recruitment, communications and translation. In addition, we now have access to a resource centre that is part of the Conseil communauté en santé.

Bilingual signage and new public education material have been developed to a certain degree, but definitely not to a point that and makes us proud. In our last annual report, we note that the City of Winnipeg has 500 designated bilingual positions. That figure may seem large, but it must be kept in mind that 27,000 people work in health in the Winnipeg region. So we're talking about a little more than one percent.

In the past five years, we've been working in close cooperation with the Collège universitaire de Saint-Boniface and the Consortium national de formation en santé to develop training for Francophone physicians as well as nursing and health care aid programs. Over the past few years, this partnership has produced some 20 nursing graduates a year. Three doctors, who have already graduated from medical school, are currently taking family medicine residencies.

This year, eight doctors are in training, in unusual circumstances. Some are studying in English at the University of Manitoba, others at the University of Ottawa. In addition, two doctors are in training at the University of Sherbrooke. We've calculated that roughly 14 would have to be trained each year for us to be able to hope, within 20 or 25 years, to provide half of the frontline medical services required, that is in family medicine. We've made good progress, but it's barely enough to offset departures.

We've managed to establish certain services. Our objective, which seems a distant one, is to actively offer services to the public when they present for service. A report by a committee chaired by Judge Chartier has designated specific areas where an attempt should be made to increase active offer. The Hôpital général Saint-Boniface is preparing, after 15 years of efforts, to designate bilingual positions in sectors such as emergency medicine, obstetrics, maternity and geriatrics. In this last sector, it should not be forgotten that the Francophone population is aging.

This is a battle in a minority setting such as ours.

We're nevertheless facing major challenges, particularly in recruitment and retention.

It's one thing to offer training, but quite another to get people to enroll in a strongly minority setting. In addition, competition is generally tough across the country for getting into universities and among graduates. It isn't uncommon for people with French-language training to be highly sought after and recruited by sectors that aren't bilingual.

Keeping the people we manage to train is a challenge. Getting Francophones or bilinguals in a minority setting into a relatively new health training program is another. Some schools nearby have been established for a number of years. Once these people have graduated—which Mr. Gagné talked about—all the organizations that offer services pick them up. So there's very strong competition among us for the few people we train.

Unfortunately, we're not having a lot of success recruiting people outside the province, attracting bilingual people here to Manitoba. We haven't done very well in that regard.

Obviously it's hard for us to be more attractive than others because our collective agreements in the health field are so rigid that it's very difficult to offer financial or other incentives.

I've already mentioned the efforts that have been made to get people to enroll in training programs. We must continue putting the emphasis on that. The health strategy adopted in Winnipeg is also to go after candidates from immersion schools. Within 10 years, there will probably be as many Manitoban francophiles coming out of immersion—that is Anglophones who have studied in French—as so-called old stock Francophones.

As regards federal government support, what would we like? First, of course, we would like the government to continue the efforts it's been making for the past five to seven years. A few years ago, when we started focusing on medical training, we thought that success in the first year would be to have a doctor or student do an internship. We were at that stage.

Now we have eight doctors in training, three post-doctoral physicians in training and some 17 doctors who did internships this year. So that's progress, but it's very tenuous.

How can we add to that? We must continue promoting bilingualism. I'm originally from Montreal, and I've been here for five years. Bilingualism programs have been so successful that being bilingual is now considered sexy in the Winnipeg community, whereas that wasn't at all the case a few years ago. So these efforts must continue.

If we could get some support, assistance for the people we send for training outside the province, because we don't always have the capacity to take them in at the university or college level here, if we could get incentive programs to ensure that they come back to their community to practice their profession, and if we could have programs designed to encourage young Francophones or bilinguals to go into the health field, that would be good.

I'll stop there, Mr. Chair.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

Thank you.

I forgot to say something at the outset, and I apologize. I wanted to thank you sincerely for adjusting to our agenda. As you know, that's important for us.

Tomorrow, we and all the political parties will be called back to Parliament. I'm sure you know why. A very important vote will be held at 3:00 p.m., and we want to be there to discharge our responsibility.

On behalf of the committee, I sincerely want to thank you for travelling here this evening and for changing your plans. It was undoubtedly not easy for all of you; we very much appreciate that. We want to say thanks, and I wanted to do that before I forgot.

Mr. Simard, go ahead, please.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I too would like to thank you for travelling here this evening.

I'm going to start by discussing health. In all the provinces we've visited, we've seen an infrastructure created with very little money: $119 million over five years. That's not considered a very big amount. However, we've seen that, if the Action Plan for Official Languages, the Dion Plan, has had any success, it's indeed been in the health field.

However, there's one thing we haven't discussed: that's the leverage effect. I don't know whether Mr. Gagné is aware of that. It was said that, in Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes, for example, they were going to create a health centre for which the community raised some $1.2 million. So the communities have gotten involved, and the provinces have also invested money.

The plan has invested $751 million, but it could leverage $2 or $3 billion. Could you tell me a little about that?

[Charles Gagné]

Thank you, Mr. Simard.

The project you refer to, the one in Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes, is a good example of a federal contribution that snowballed. Not only did it make it possible to develop a project, but it also received significant support from the province—because health is nevertheless a provincial jurisdiction—which led the community to make a fairly large investment in it. So this is a partnership involving three parties, which we hadn't previously seen, at least at the same level.

The federal investment—it has to be considered an investment—has undoubtedly had a multiplier effect. The figure of 50¢ per dollar was mentioned. In some instances, you could almost state 25¢ per dollar. You could multiply every 25¢ that the federal government invests by two or three. That's a sign of greater acceptance of the Francophone phenomenon by the province and also of a sufficient commitment by the community to establish French-language health services. The community mainly makes a commitment to primary health; it's very consistent in primary health. That's a very good example. We could cite a number of other examples in this area.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

In addition, wherever we've travelled, people have told us that this was just a start. The infrastructure has been put in place, but I imagine it's still quite fragile. It's only been in place for three years. Perhaps we could start preparing the next action plan for the next five years. How should it be improved, and where should the funds be invested? Are other health centres needed? Should those we've put in place be changed? Where should we make commitments?

[Charles Gagné]

That's a tough question because, in one sense, that means making a certain choice among services, which are all... I'm thinking of the demand for resources, and when you talk about French-language services...

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

We're thinking of training, for example.

[Charles Gagné]

There's no doubt in our mind that, if there were two basic pillars, the first would be manpower training. First of all, if there isn't any labour force capable of working in French, or both languages, that's ready to serve Francophone communities, that makes no sense.

The other important pillar is primary health care services. We have to find new ways of delivering health care services in communities that have lost services as a result of system centralization—what's called regionalization—or that have never known any other primary health services than those based on the physician.

How do you bring in other professionals, multidisciplinary teams? The community has to be organized like services or the offer of services have to be organized so that bilingual teams are accessible to the bilingual communities. One of the projects often talked about is the project involving mobile teams or a fairly large regional authority, especially in rural areas, where bilingual teams essentially have a mandate to serve bilingual communities. So resources are needed for that.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

Do I have any time left, Mr. Chair?

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

: You have 30 seconds.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

: Ms. Lanthier, one of the sectors not really addressed in the Action Plan for Official Languages is communications.

I think that, if we've heard any concerns and issues expressed over the past two or three years, they're about this sector. It seems to me that one of the sectors that should really be addressed when the next plan is drafted is yours.

In addition, we saw the extent to which the lockout at Radio-Canada last summer affected us. We had no service in French. Could you briefly tell us about the importance of this sector and how it affects people living in a minority setting?

[Sylviane Lanthier]

I believe that if there weren't any communications in French, the community wouldn't see itself reflected anywhere. The majority media don't cover matters of interest to Francophones or what they do. If you read the Winnipeg Free Press, if you look at the English-language television networks or if you listen to English-language radio, you won't hear about the people from Saint-Pierre-Jolys or Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes.

As a result, we heard about the official opening of the Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes health centre one week before the first sod was turned, and we've been monitoring this file for a long time. People won't find that in other newspapers. The community media obviously play an essential role. People see themselves reflected back home and don't see themselves elsewhere.

It's true that the communications sector is one of the major forgotten sectors of the Dion Plan. When you talk about the support the federal government can provide to newspapers—and I'm only talking about newspapers because that's what I know best—we're generally talking about advertising. However, the government buys advertising in all the media. There's no specific support for the development of a Francophone minority press. The same is true of the Publications Assistance Program. In view of the millions of dollars this program generates, very little money is paid to the minority press. The same is true of the Canada Magazine Fund. There's millions of dollars to help Canadian magazines, but no money is paid to the newspapers of the minority Francophone press.

If it wants to include communications in the next plan for official languages or in any initiative whatever, the federal government must set an objective of supporting the Francophone minority press. Everything has to be done, because nothing's happening at the moment.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Yvon Godin]

Thank you.

Mrs. Boucher.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

I'd like to thank you for being here. Perhaps you've been a bit stuck, as we have moreover, but we very much appreciate being here.

This is an important committee, which is travelling for the first time in 25 years. As a result of this tour, I'm realizing that, when people come to see us at our offices in Ottawa, it's one thing, whereas, when we're in the middle of the action, it's another. It's different when you see things in the field.

Mr. Robert, we haven't heard from you yet. I think it's important to hear from everyone.

As you know, I represent the government party. I'd like to know what solution you can suggest to our government for the short or long term to develop the viability of the official language communities here, particularly the Francophone communities.