Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses for appearing today.
Last May, the office of the ombudsman noted in a letter to the Chief of the Defence Staff that a number of improvements had been made in terms of the treatment of francophones at Borden. However, then, as now, the office has also indicated that a number of serious concerns remain unresolved.
In your opening remarks you note that there's a lack of bilingual instructors. There's a lack of good training manuals in French, and a lack of availability of courses in French. You also note that there is a lack of access to medical services and police services in French.
I have no doubt about the intention of the Minister of National Defence and our government and everybody involved to resolve these issues expeditiously, but where is the difficulty in trying to resolve these issues?
Let's just focus, for example, on the lack of training manuals in an appropriate quality of French. Do we contract out those services? Is it a problem with the company holding the contract to translate these manuals? Is it a lack of translators available to do translation? Where are the problems in the lack of training manuals in French?