Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome, Ms. Kenny and Ms. Bossé. I also want to congratulate you on your report.
This year, we are marking the 40th anniversary of the Official Languages Act. It's a celebration that I would never have wanted to attend because we're still talking about it 40 years later. When you celebrate, it's because it's a joyful occasion. We're celebrating, but we receive reports like yours, or when we hear that the RCMP has stopped someone on the road who is entitled to be served in French, although, 10 kilometers from there, the act doesn't protect the person they have stopped, even though they're in front of a French-language school. I remember some time ago, when we fought in New Brunswick for the RCMP—regardless of whether the person was in Fredericton, Moncton or Caraquet; we're a bilingual province and the only bilingual province in Canada—to be subject to the act. If the RCMP decided to proceed in English, that was fine. We had to go to court, and we had to face the three departments, Canadian Heritage, the Department of Justice and Treasury Board. Everyone is involved but there is no conductor.
Lastly, we had to go to court, then to appellate court, and we won our case. That occurred 40 years after the Official Languages Act was introduced and in a country that says it is bilingual and in a province that says it's bilingual. We weren't fighting because the members of the RCMP only spoke French and didn't want to speak English.
We passed Bill S-3, which made Part VII of the act executory. What do you think of that? Do you think we've made progress since that act came into force, or has there been no change?
