Thank you very much, Mr. Rodriguez.
I apologize for being late.
I am replacing a colleague, but I am very concerned about this issue. I am from a minority community and I saw my parents fight to get French schools in Manitoba. Sometimes, we even had to hide our French books when the inspectors came to visit. Can you imagine! We saw the cultural fabric of our community disintegrate. Obviously, this was before the Court Challenges Program. We know now that there was some truly discriminatory legislation on the books.
The Court Challenges Program truly is extremely valuable in ensuring our rights as francophones. And I'm also talking about all the other minorities, obviously.
When I asked Mr. Toews, when he was minister, what we would lose by eliminating the Court Challenges Program, he answered quite casually that the Conservative government was going to simply adopt fair legislation. If those wonderful promises were kept, it would be easy to trample over many rights.
My question is this. Unfortunately, I was not able to hear your presentation, but I'd like to know what more could be done to convince this government of the merits or the interests of maintaining this program. If there are little things that need to be changed to ensure that it works for everyone, I think we would consider it. I wonder if we can make one last appeal to convince the government, which, to date in any case, has turned a deaf ear to our questions and comments.