The Public Service Agency had certain responsibilities with regard to training. The Agency is currently disappearing, and those functions will fall to the Treasury Board, which, in the past, has had responsibilities concerning linguistic duality.
One thing has struck me. I'm going to respond to you in a more detailed manner, but first in a more general way. For three years now, there have been changes in responsibility within the government with respect to languages. Prior to early 2006, progress monitoring was conducted by the Privy Council. That responsibility has been transferred to the Department of Canadian Heritage, which, at the same time, has responsibility for monitoring compliance with the act within the other departments, as well as direct responsibility for official languages. The decision was made to assign that to two different branches, and that's a bit of a concern for us.
For you, I've previously noted that that raised some concerns over the fact that this monitoring obligation was no longer the task of the Privy Council. The analogy that I draw is that, in an office, when a directive comes from above, it is complied with more quickly than if it comes from the office next door.
A study was commissioned from Professor Donald Savoie. It contains a chapter on horizontality. It was a quite subtle study on the question. I'm not going to repeat to you what it was about; there's a chapter in the last annual report. What I see is that institutional changes are destabilizing in terms of compliance with linguistic obligations. Every time there is a change, people have to get used to obligations and responsibilities. No one is entirely sure of his or her new responsibilities. Priorities can change. So every transfer of responsibilities of this kind concerns me a little.
You have to be more vigilant to ensure that a transfer doesn't mean a lower priority is attached to the question. I'm not necessarily saying it's a bad thing in itself that there has been a transfer from the Agency to the Treasury Board, but I'm going to make an extra effort to monitor the matter, to ensure that priority is not lost.