Thank you very much, madam. You've asked a good number of questions. I could take much more than the allotted time to answer them.
First, I want to thank you for your congratulations. My predecessor, Dyane Adam, left me with a very strong team that has helped me enormously in understanding the issues.
With regard to the action plan, I've been impressed by the French-language health networks that have been created or reinforced outside Quebec. I've also been struck by the fact that, thanks to the action plan, 4,000 employees of the health services network in Quebec have been able to take specialized courses, developed by McGill University, so that they can offer services in English to the Anglophone minority. Those services are still in the initial stages, and are therefore not quite established. I think it's important to ensure this progress is not lost.
In education, the objective of ensuring that 50% of high school graduates are bilingual was quite ambitious. That requires a form of coordination between the federal government and the provinces. In addition, when I mentioned in my statement that I was going to take a close look at the postsecondary education issue, I noted that there were very few incentives in that area to encourage high school students to continue studying their second language. I believe that we should focus on selecting incentives in order to encourage them.
Last fall, the present government announced a program to promote Francophone immigration to minority communities. In visiting the minority communities across the country, I observed the extent to which immigration was still crucial to their vitality. One can understand that observation, and there is a welcoming attitude, an energy and a vitality in those communities that impressed me. People are ready, but there has to be follow-up to those announcements, so that the will to increase Francophone immigration in the minority communities is maintained.
As for early childhood, one of the challenges is to ensure that those who have the right to send their children to minority schools exercise that right. Early childhood is an important entry into minority schools, particularly in the case of exogamous families. Some parents have that right, but have lost their language. For some of those people, the language used in the home is not the language of the minority. Studies have shown—and the experience of the Government of Ontario, which has carried out certain pilot projects, is particularly significant—that early childhood is a very important factor.
In addition, at a meeting between all our employees and representatives of the minority community, someone from the Quebec community groups networks raised the question of the importance of the employability of minority Anglophones in Quebec. I believe the situation is the same in the minority communities.