With regard to the linguistic communities, immigration can play a very significant role, but the challenge is the lack of coordination between policies and federal programs. The federal government and the provinces are ultimately responsible for recruiting immigrants. If the provinces do not conclude federal-provincial agreements on immigration in order to take an active role in recruiting immigrants, this creates a problem right from the start. Furthermore, there must be a partnership with the language communities. In fact, if the provinces reach federal-provincial agreements on immigration, but they fail to include the official languages, this will not help the francophone communities outside Quebec.
However, even if we attract francophone immigrants, but we don't have any reception structures in the communities, be they rural or urban, immigrants from francophone countries will turn to English for health care services and early childhood services or access to employment services, as well as for English as a second language courses. Once they've developed their network in English, it's extremely difficult to bring them back to French.
Therefore, the reception structures must be available from the moment they get off the plane. We need to provide them with a range of services, both in rural regions and urban ones. That is why coordination between rural and urban francophone communities is essential. We must work together because, as is often the case in a region, a population is too small to have duplicate institutions. The federal government really needs to consider the linguistic communities as active partners and put pressure on the provincial governments to include...