Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Firstly, I wish to thank Minister Verner.
as well as Minister O'Connor for their very prompt reply to our request for them to appear before the committee. I think we are all very much on the same wavelength, in the sense that we want the army to be bilingual.
Minister O'Connor, I would like to clarify my position. I'm a former linguist, and as I listened to you, especially in the last part of your speech, I heard the kind of speech we used to hear 20 years ago when we were talking about making the Canadian armed forces bilingual. It seems to me we're going back 20 years and talking about making the army bilingual, so something obviously has not worked right. In this, I totally agree with what you and Madame Verner have said.
I believe that everyone here has serious concerns over bilingualism within the Canadian Forces, especially since other committees in the past have worked very hard to make CF members bilingual, and representative of the Canadian public. How our country is portrayed abroad is important. I think we all agree on this.
When a language program is not working, we must focus on several factors to find the cause of the problem. We can try and determine if the expected results were too ambitious, if the work tools were appropriate, or if people were motivated enough to learn the other language.
I'm among those who believe that anyone can learn another language. I'm addressing my remarks to both ministers. It's a matter of motivation, and having the proper learning tools.
Minister, when you say that only senior officers of the armed forces should have to learn the other language, I believe that on the one hand, we must begin much earlier, and on the other hand, this may indicate that we automatically assume that junior officers are unable to learn a language. I disagree with this.
After having read your document and heard your speech, there are three elements of the Official Languages Act, in relation to the Canadian Forces, which catch my attention. They are parts IV, V and VI of the act.
Part IV deals with services to the public; part V deals with language of work at headquarters; and part VI deals with soldiers' access to promotions, particularly francophones.
Gathering from what you have said and what I have read, the transformation model deals specifically with services to the public, and therefore falls under part IV. Yet, this committee and other committees on official languages working previously have extensively gone through parts V and VI, which deal respectively with language of work and the promotion of bilingual people, francophones in particular.
My question is addressed to both ministers. Why should we emphasize service to the public, when this appears to me to be a minor factor? Why not focus on language of work at headquarters, which plays a major role in internal services, not only in terms of the image that the Canadian Forces want to project, but also in terms of promoting francophones and bilingual employees?
That is the first part of my question.