Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome, Mr. Fraser.
I am very pleased to see you here today, in your role as Official Languages Commissioner. I am not saying that your predecessors did not take this task seriously, on the contrary, but I am personally very pleased to see you here, all the more so because, listening to your speech, I noted that you were drawing a very arresting picture of what I and many of my colleagues think of the new situation within the Canadian Forces.
I have always believed that the Canadian Forces were there to protect Canadians, be it here or elsewhere, in the short or long term. The Canadian Forces also project an image of Canada within Canada but also to others outside of Canada.
What I heard from the Minister responsible for Official Languages and the Minister of National Defence is that this image was increasingly becoming—it already is—one in which Canada is almost solely a unilingual anglophone country.
You said something extremely important. Sometimes, it is important to face reality, and you did so by recognizing that a unilingual francophone, an infantryman, has nowhere to go in the Canadian armed forces, because of the regulations, because of the way in which courses are organized. Mr. Commissioner, I am a former linguist. So you can understand that I have an opinion on this.
I want to make a comment and then ask a question. I make this comment to the Minister of National Defence. When language courses are organized, various criteria are taken into consideration. First, the objectives are considered and, ultimately, those objectives are assessed. However, I consider the objective of this new program of the Canadian Forces to be mediocre, if not worse.
Then, you need to ensure that those taking the course are motivated. Given the situation you've just described to us, I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that there is little or no motivation. I am talking about anglophones who have to learn French.
Then, we must consider the tools provided to both students and teachers. Once again, the situation you described with regard to the St. John Royal Military College, which was an excellent environment and provided immersion courses not only to the college itself but also to the town, demonstrates that the tools that the Canadian Forces has made available and continues to make available are steadily deteriorating. Of course, we know little about the evaluation.
As a former linguist, I fail to understand why they decided to do an evaluation five years later. Why not 15 years later while they're at it?
Finally, you used one word repeatedly in your speech, the word "unacceptable".
Those are the comments I wanted to make to you to tell you just how happy I am to hear your comments. Could you comment on what I've just said, but I'd also like you to comment on the following. If I've understood correctly, we have been told that from now on, Canadian Forces units would more or less be divided into linguistic units: anglophones on the one side; francophones on the other. This reminds me somewhat of what happened during the Second World War, when many countries, including the United States, had Black units and White units. And never the two shall meet. If we want the Canadian Forces to reflect our society, it is essential that people work together. Therefore, I am opposed to the idea of having separate linguistic units right from the start. I would like to hear your comments on this, please.