Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for being here today, Mr. Fraser. Thanks as well to the members of your office.
In your report, you say, and I quote:
During the design process, the federal government must carefully consider expanding the scope of the Action Plan to include, in particular, arts and culture, youth initiatives and new measures for promoting linguistic duality.
As many of those topics were addressed in the study on the vitality of the official language minority communities and those topics have an excellent chance of being among our future concerns in the context of our work as the government, could you give us more details on your vision for that expansion? For example, what do you think of a trilinguilism policy?
On replacement for the government's action plan on official languages, you mentioned that there should be consideration to enlarge it. What do you think about the federal government using its spending power to get the provinces to adopt a policy of trilingualism? Each high school student, each CÉGEP student--each graduate from those institutions--would be required to know three languages, two of which would be Canada's official languages, of course, and the third would be
their choice.
You would create a situation that exists largely in western Europe today.
Many people might say this is not feasible, but my ancestry is half European; my mother was European. After the Second World War--only 50 years ago--there wasn't a person who could speak another language other than their native tongue. Today in western Europe it's almost impossible not to speak English. People speak to you in English if they hear your accent. They've done it over there.
It would be a great way to address the challenges of national unity and compliance with the Official Languages Act. It would be great for diversity. Let's say you're an aboriginal Canadian; it would be a great way to preserve some of those languages. If you're a Canadian of Chinese descent, it would be a great way to preserve your language. If you're a Canadian of Italian or Hispanic descent, it would be the same.
And it's good for international commerce. We talk about being a trading nation--the Phoenicians of the modern world--yet we are remarkably unilingual compared to many other countries.
The reason I ask this question is because we are often myopic on this committee. We focus on very specific things. We often don't take a step back, as you do, to take a look at the broader picture and to ask these questions. I often wonder whether something like this, while ambitious, might not be something to be considered.
Have you thought about this and the potential costs and challenges of implementing something like this?