Yes, of course. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Minister, in the final analysis, by admitting that Canadian society is not capable of providing Supreme Court justices that all speak French—in practice, that is what you are saying—are you not acknowledging that Canada's evolution is always against French?
In other words, we have Supreme Court justices who all speak English and who are all able to understand arguments in English, but some of them are not able to understand the subtleties of arguments made in French. The result, obviously—as we can easily surmise—is that the Court generally operates in English and that there are two official languages according to the way things usually work—the Canadian way, which means that we have English and simultaneous translation. Are we not talking about a situation which, in actual fact, is unlikely to improve? At the time of Confederation, more than one third of Canada's population was French-speaking, whereas now it is 22% and is declining more quickly—indeed, at an ever-increasing rate for several decades now.
If, with a Francophone population of 22%—which is already not that high—we are unable to have judges at the Supreme Court who speak French, I doubt that 5, 10 or 20 years from now, when the Francophone population has declined to 15% or 18%, we will be able to introduce a similar requirement.
Does that mean that we, Quebeckers, will forever more be second-class citizens, as other members of this Committee have already said? Do you not think that a Quebec that had its own government and its own courts could better serve its citizens in their mother tongue? In that scenario, all judges, up to the very highest level, would speak fluent French.