Thank you, gentlemen, for coming this morning and for your presentations.
As you told us, immigration is an important demographic factor, especially in minority official language communities. This is an issue that is of great interest to our government. A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of announcing on behalf of the Minister for Citizenship and Immigration more than $7 million in core funding to support francophone immigrants in Ontario. That funding was for areas such as health, education and economic development.
My perception is that the main linguistic challenge for language minorities lies in the retention and integration of immigrants into our communities. We also need strong institutions that will encourage as complete a community life as possible.
I would like to know how you view the contribution of immigration to minority official language communities.
Perhaps we could begin with you, Mr. Jedwab.