Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon, Mr. Minister, Ms. LaRocque and Mr. Sobrino.
We cancelled the meeting for technical reasons. We have always asked that the meetings be televised, and that was the only reason we cancelled the meeting, not because we did not want to see you.
With that said, Mr. Minister, there are three topics I am concerned about. The first is something you have certainly already heard about, and that is the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. You even stated that you were disappointed in that regard. We discovered recently in the contribution agreement that the federal government had not required VANOC to use French and English equally in the ceremony. That resulted in an unfortunate situation. So the nation of Quebec was not represented equally during the opening ceremony. You may recall that Mr. Charest, the Quebec premier, also expressed his regrets in this regard. We also learned that the Commissioner of Official Languages received some 40 complaints about the ceremony in which French and English were not recognized equally. One could even say that French was virtually absent.
We met with you before the Olympic Games, we heard from you in the House of Commons and we met with VANOC representatives, who basically told us “don't worry, be happy“. But then we realized that we had no cause to be.
I wonder if something fishy was going on when you told us that everything would be fine. You seemed to believe that, and yet you did not exert pressure or stipulate in the contribution agreement the importance of having French represented to a degree that would have met the aspirations of the Quebec nation and the French fact in Quebec and Canada. Is that due to political naïveté? What are you going to do to follow up on this situation? The Olympic Games are over, but I would like to hear your explanation concerning the fact that French did not have its rightful place in the opening ceremony.