Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to give a warm welcome to our witnesses, whom we have met with a number of times already.
I am somewhat taken aback by what I am hearing regarding consultation. I personally am certainly available. We have had a number of consultations with you in the FCFA.
We meet regularly in my office, so to not be acknowledged for the time that's put into it is a bit surprising.
I'm particularly surprised by QCGN this morning. The apologies that you made to me this morning for missing your consultation meeting with me last week I truly felt were sincere. Yet you didn't mention that this morning when Monsieur Godin asked if there were consultations. There have been consultations. In fact, I have to say the department meets regularly, at least once a year anyway, with the organizations. I wanted to meet, and QCGN actually turned me down and said they would only meet with the minister. And last week the minister and I waited for half an hour for a consultation that no one showed up to. So I'm a little surprised, when we talk about consultations, that those consultations aren't acknowledged.
Furthermore, when we talk about our commitment to official languages, this is a feuille de route with $1.1 billion. That is sans précédent , it's an historic amount of money, and that is a firm commitment to both the English-speaking minority community in Quebec and of course the French-speaking minority communities across the rest of the country.
In any event, I do have some questions.
To begin with, I want to provide some information to the FCFA, since I understand that it is hard for them to find information on the Web sites. The Web site of the Official Languages Secretariat has everything that you are looking for on the other Web sites. Perhaps there could be a link for the Health Canada Web site, for example. That said, everything is on the Secretariat Web site. They are required to provide that information. I wanted to share that in order to help you.
On the immigration issue, I am very pleased to hear that comment, since it was the government that suggested that our committee examine immigration. Things are changing a lot in that area, and there are consequences for both minority communities. I can tell you that we have doubled the amount of money available since the time of the action plan. So I am eager to see the results of our immigration study. I believe that this will help us remain engaged with our minority communities.
I would like to know how your two groups—you are umbrella groups, in a way—exchange information. How do you organize consultations and exchanges? Do the FCFA and QCGN hold meetings together?