Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Good morning, Minister.
Minister, I have a lot of things to say, but very little time available to me, unfortunately. The Official Languages Act is now 40 years old. It is intended to ensure that all citizens can receive services from their federal government in the language of their choice all across the country. That is the whole rationale for the Official Languages Act.
Having said that, looking at what is going on inside the public administration and comparing the Dion plan to the Roadmap for Canada's linguistic duality, it seems that we have gone from $72 million to $17 million. That is money invested in the public service so that people are able to… We know that there are gaps as far as French is concerned, it being the minority language. There has been a huge drop—from $72 million to $17 million—in the monies invested in the public service to ensure that public servants are able to speak the language of choice of the people they are dealing with.
I have read the report and the documents you forwarded to us. We are told that the reason for this is that the money has been given to the Canada School of Public Service to provide better training. We have gone from $13 million to $3 million. I am talking about the money from the first plan and the second plan. How can you say that the spirit and Part IV of the Act are respected—particularly in terms of communications with the public and service delivery—when there has been such a glaring decrease in the money provided to the public service to ensure that services are delivered in the language of the minority?