Yes, Mr. Chair.
This concerns a request for documents on the part of our researchers. Yesterday, in the La Presse newspaper, there was an article on expenditures for language training in the public service, and this article was also printed in the Le Droit paper.
Mr. Chair, I think that the article does not compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. Perhaps we should get some more information. It was implied that from 2001 to 2009 there was a huge increase in training expenditures. The article stated that at one point in time, the School of Public Service stopped offering free courses. The courses the school was providing were not free. Someone was paying for them.
Could we ask our researchers to pull up the annual budgets for language training by the School of Public Service for the years preceding the moment when departments were no longer obliged to use the school for training? We might get a fairer, more balanced picture of the situation.