Thank you, Mr. Chair.
This is a very interesting experience for me, because as you probably know, I'm the Parliamentary Secretary for Multiculturalism. Whenever you talk about languages, I may have a slightly different perspective when we only look at bilingualism. Canada is a bilingual country, and we need both French and English, and I'm so lucky that I speak English, one of the official languages, well enough to be here to represent my riding, where 67% of my constituents speak a language other than the two official languages. Some of my constituents would love to have access to as many languages as possible. I would not argue for only English or French, but what about Farsi or Chinese or Korean?
I come from the business point of view, because my background happens to be that I taught business in school, in university, in marketing and other areas. I travel a lot. Find out how many times I've flown with Air Canada, not only between here and my constituency, but all over the world.
I also come from the perspective of a consumer, a customer. I would definitely love to have a forum in which I can express my opinions.
However, I want to speak from two different perspectives, first from the business point of view, and second, from the perspective of official languages and linguistic duality. I also have a degree in linguistics, and my doctorate degree is in business. My dissertation is on bilingualism from a practical perspective, a study of content and language. I think this is quite an interesting topic. I'd be more than happy to comment on that.