Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Fraser, for your testimony.
First, I have two broad comments.
As a Toronto region MP, I'd like to offer the commissioner my thoughts regarding the intersection of linguistic duality and cultural diversity. I'm glad you're exploring this area, because I can tell you that the country's largest city region is changing rapidly, and more rapidly than most people in this town are aware of. It's something that one academic referred to as the galloping heterogeneity of the new Canada.
It's a region that has, as you know, almost 5.5 million people. It's going to 9 million people in just over 20 years. I don't think most Canadians are aware of how rapidly this region is growing. The fastest growing municipalities in the country are not in the west, in Alberta; they're actually in the Toronto region.
All this growth will be from immigration. If the region is properly represented in the House of Commons, this region, what the province is now calling the GTA, or the greater golden horseshoe, will have more seats than any other province, including the rest of Ontario.
So I think one of the big challenges for the Government of Canada in the coming years will be to balance this diversity with some of our nation's most cherished ideals. In other words, how do you accommodate this diversity while protecting and fostering some of the fundamentals on which this country was based? I think this study is going to be very important, and I'm glad to see you're undertaking it. I'd like to offer you my thoughts on it.
As the son of immigrants to this country.... I think most new Canadians wholeheartedly embrace the ideals of bilingualism, and do so in a way that maybe native-born Canadians won't because they understand the need to speak another language. Most of them are coming from countries where English is not the mother tongue, and they are very open to learning a second or third language. So I think they will wholeheartedly embrace bilingualism, but only if bilingualism is not associated with ethnicity. The minute bilingualism or linguistic duality is in any way, shape, or form associated with ethnicity, you're going to get absolutely no uptake, no buy-in from these new Canadians. From my perspective, that is a very important part of how we can proceed with encouraging greater bilingualism and greater linguistic duality throughout this country.
The second broad comment I want to make is regarding the study you're undertaking with the Association of Universities and Colleges in Canada. As a graduate of the public education system in Ontario, I think I got a very good education, with one exception, and that is the fact that I was never properly encouraged to learn French. I did take high school French, but it was never the focus of the public education system the way it should have been. When the country's largest employer and its public institutions are bilingual, and you come to a town like this and suddenly realize the disconnect between our public education system and the need to speak French in federal institutions....
This is something that needs to be examined further. I guess one way to do it is through the poll method, where you encourage universities to strengthen their entrance requirements to include French as one of the requirements for entrants. The other way is to examine ways that provinces could require French as a requirement for graduation.
I live near Waterloo. If the University of Waterloo or Microsoft was not getting the graduates from high school it needed for engineering positions at Microsoft or for engineering positions at Research in Motion, there would be a hue and cry about it, but when the country's largest employer isn't getting the graduates it needs, there doesn't seem to be any action on it, with respect to universities or high schools and other pre-secondary institutions.
I encourage you to look at that because I think that is a big gap in public policy in this country.
My mother was European, and in Europe after the Second World War there wasn't a person who could speak a language other than their own native tongue. Within 15 or 20 years, most western European countries had adopted a policy of trilingualism. Today it's almost impossible not to speak French or English in your own native tongue in any country in western Europe, because the minute they detect any sort of accent in your use of their language, they flip to your language. There is no reason we couldn't achieve that type of policy here as well.
I don't know if you have any comments on those things.