Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to thank our witnesses for being with us this morning. I must admit that, just from the standpoint of statistics on immigrants' mother tongue, the only possible way of increasing the numbers in that area—it seems to me—is to only consider immigrant couples whose mother tongue is French.
Let us look at the situation around the world. In Belgium, as in many other countries, people do not only speak one language. In many cases, even if the mother tongue is not French, the family still speaks that language 90% of the time. So, if we do not want unilingual Francophone couples to emigrate, possibly from France, in order to start a family in Canada, then the percentages will undoubtedly change in the statistics on mother tongue.
Ms. Lamarre, you are evidence of that. You were able to speak French and live in French even though your parents were not necessarily both unilingual Francophones. If we limit ourselves to that, we will most certainly see a decline for the rest of our lives. I think we have to look a little further than that. We have to look beyond the traditional framework.
I would like to use Ms. Glover as an example. I have three nieces who attend school in Ms. Glover's riding, in Saint Boniface. Their mother tongue may not be designated as French, because they have one Anglophone parent and one Francophone parent. However, they live 75% of their life in French. It seems to me that if my sister had not moved to Saint Boniface, in Winnipeg, there would be four fewer people supporting the vitality of that Francophone community.
If we go no further than the traditional framework and leave it tightly closed, without ever opening it up, even slightly, there is no doubt that we will continue to see a problem in the statistics on mother tongue. We have to broaden our horizons. It is important to realize that immigrants coming to this country, even though they may have learned two, three, four or even five languages elsewhere before coming here and may not have French as their mother tongue, are still Francophones. Perhaps the method used is causing the problem. If we continue to do the same thing, we will continue to see problems and conclude that there is a decline happening across the country.
Ms. Lamarre, I would just like to know whether you think that what I just said may reflect the current reality, or whether you completely disagree with me.