Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you both for being here before us this morning.
I understand your comments, Ms. Kenny, regarding the slowness of improvements. I'll cite you a few examples.
First, in 2006, I introduced a motion in committee concerning the maintenance of the Publications Assistance Program. You know of it. Among other things, you sent us a letter of support for the Association de la presse francophone, for the maintenance and continuation of the program. It is now 2009 and it will soon be 2010, when the program will simply be replaced by the Canada Periodical Fund. That's what we suppose. It should be done before next April 1. It is already December.
Failing a guarantee that the program won't be cancelled—it can change names and be called whatever anyone wants; that's not the objective; the objective is for the funding to continue—I want to inform you that the clerk will be receiving a motion from me today concerning that program. I introduced one in 2006, and I'm forced to do so again today. That's terrible.
I can read you the text of the motion: That the Committee recommend that the government:- maintain the funding provided by the Canada Post Corporation for the Publication Assistance Program for publications serving official language communities living in minority areas;- immediately replace the program ending on March 31, 2010 with the new Canada Periodical Fund on April 1, 2010; and- that these recommendations be reported to the House as soon as possible.
I did it in 2006 in the hope of never needing to do it again. Today I have to redo the same process, and there's still no guarantee that the new program will be in place on April 1.
Second, yesterday I put a question to the Minister of Justice, who appeared before the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. I asked him his opinion on the obligation for Supreme Court judges to be bilingual. At no point did he want to say that would be desirable. He only told me about the merit issue. I asked whether it would be possible to include bilingualism in the factors related to merit that made it possible to score additional points. He was unable to answer me in the affirmative.
Third, last Tuesday, the Commissioner of Official Languages presented a report on Vancouver Airport's preparations for the 2010 Olympic Games. The head of the airport told us that he had hired someone. To our great dismay, we learned that that person had been hired four weeks earlier. That's terrible.
I put some questions to the woman who accompanied the head of the airport—she mentioned that she had been one of the persons responsible for official languages over her 32 years at the airport—and it seemed clear that someone somewhere was preventing bilingualism from advancing.
If someone has managed official languages at the airport for 32 years and the organization has just hired a person who will be responsible for that matter in anticipation of the Games—14 weeks before the start of the event—how do you think they can resolve the situation?
Airport officials told us that it was a complex matter, that it was infernal and that franchisees can't be bilingual. They believe that, in 14 weeks, they'll resolve everything, when they were unable to do so in the six, 12, 24 preceding months or, as you mentioned, over the last 40 years.
I know I'm not leaving you a lot of time to answer, but I wanted to mention some situations we face every day. We got a message from Air Canada saying that they wanted to assure us that, on board Air Canada's aircraft—especially the Jazz DASH 8s—we'll no longer be seeing the sign stating “Ne pas fumer les toilettes.” I had to talk about that for a year or a year and a half regularly—