Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I don't think we should be studying the court challenges program again, or any of these other issues, frankly, for two reasons.
First, there will be plenty of opportunity to look at them in the upcoming session by calling the official languages commissioner when he makes his determination as to what his recommendation is in response to the cancellation of the court challenges program, so there will be an opportunity for the committee to call him as a witness for one meeting.
I don't think we should spend the entire committee's business for the next three or four months or beyond studying one issue that has really been studied to death, and that applies to these other issues that have been discussed as potential study topics. More importantly, I think all these issues that the opposition is proposing are frankly symptomatic and not foundational to bilingualism in Canada. If we really want to be useful as a committee, I propose that we study the entrance requirements for Canadian universities with respect to the knowledge of French.
It used to be the case in Ontario, for example, that the University of Toronto required French as essential to be accepted into university. They cancelled that requirement a number of years ago. As a result, you no longer need to know French coming out of high school in order to be accepted into university. This is something the committee could study. We could call the university presidents into committee here to study this; if the study comes out and recommends that universities make this change to the program, and that change happens, it would have a far more profound impact on bilingualism and on francophones in this country than would studying these issues that are frankly symptomatic and not foundational, many of which have been studied to death in the previous session of Parliament.
Third, there will be plenty of opportunity for us to designate special meetings of this committee and to call the official languages commissioner to highlight these issues that the opposition is concerned about, but I don't think we should spend months and months studying things that frankly are symptomatic and not foundational to what this committee is all about.
I propose that we undertake a study of the role that post-secondary institutions play in the promotion of bilingualism in this country. I think that would be a far more effective use of the committee's time.