Since the universities are involved, would you allow me to speak, Mr. Chairman?
When I left my native city, Quebec City, at the age of 21, I was a unilingual Francophone. I chose to do my studies at a unilingual Anglophone university. So, from the outset, I had to meet the challenge, for an adult, of learning English in a unilingual environment, but that was also an advantage.
Immersion in a unilingual environment over an extended period of time is the ideal situation for mastering a second language without losing mastery of one's mother tongue. This type of environment should be promoted as a host environment for further developing second language skills in Canada. It's true for basic training, and it's also true for the occupational development of both government employees and the employees of other businesses. We have to rethink the training model in which you make daily visits to a person in an environment where they speak your mother tongue and they teach you the second language for an hour, whereas you won't use it the rest of the day. We really have to think about that. The universities, whether they are Francophone in a bilingual or Anglophone environment, or Anglophone in a Francophone environment, can offer this kind of environment, which would foster more intense and more rapid training and make it possible to master the language. It's a bit like learning—