Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Good morning to you all.
I'll speak to you, minister. We'll meet with the officials, the people who work in the machinery of government, in the second part.
I want to make you aware of the situation. Let's just say it's not good. On the weekend, with my colleague Mr. Godin, I attended the general meeting of the Fédération des francophones de Terre-Neuve et du Labrador and other organizations such as the newspaper, Le Gaboteur, and the parents association, which were also holding a meeting in Labrador City.
The youth association was to receive $86,000 on April 1 for the current year. However, that money has not yet arrived. It has been granted, but it hasn't yet arrived. That's a problem.
You'll tell me that's just one example, but Cyrilda Poirier, who is director general of the federation, was forced at one point to use her credit card to pay employees because the money had been promised but had not yet arrived. You can understand the problem. These are the people on the ground. They're not doing this to cause problems, but you have to know this because these situations have been going on for a long time.
I don't want to look at the political stripe or the colour of the tie of the politician opposite me. When I was at the Fédération des francophones de Saskatoon, we had this problem as well. At the time, it was even more difficult because the Liberal government wanted to cut our funding by 53% in order to reduce the deficit. Ultimately, the cut was 37%. We had this heavy weight on our shoulders, but, in addition, the promised funding didn't come.
I would like to hear what you have to say about the following. We're talking here about the minority social fabric. Whether in Quebec or in the rest of Canada, these programs directly affect the community. If there was a delegation of signing authority—I don't know what you call that in legal terms—as a result of which the number of signatures that you have to put on a sheet of paper is shared by a larger number of individuals... I'm not saying there wouldn't be accountability; I'm not talking about a free-for-all. But if the work was done in the regions, since you have officers in the regions, or in Ottawa, for the so-called national agencies, do you think that lightening the load in this way would be desirable? We think that approximately 70% of the agreements are for less than $1 million. It seems to me, in the circumstances, that that would be a possible solution.
I would like to hear what you have to say on that.