I suppose, Mr. Chair, I'd offer in response to that first a comment on what you've put your finger on in terms of the challenges. Yes, indeed, for francophone immigrants considering a move to a country like Canada, while our prosperity and the society we have is attracting immigrants from around the world, the language barrier is a real hurdle for them. This is why primarily francophone immigrants are attracted to the province of Quebec, where they will indeed have challenges, but nowhere near as acute perhaps as in other parts of the country.
What we're trying to do is work with the receiving communities to make sure those services that we are making available are well known to prospective immigrants so that they'll see that they have the support they need for general orientation and language training as well. There are beautiful parts of the country as well, where we have French language minority communities settling, and we're looking at nurturing and increasing the vitality of those communities.
With respect to the attainability of the target, the target was set in collaboration with a number of parties when we were working on the overall strategy, including the FCFA, and together we've collaborated on establishing this target. It was set presumably as a fairly high bar but one that we thought was attainable. Based on the results we've achieved to date, which are quite encouraging, it suggests that we're on track to do that.
I don't think we can, by any means, rest on our laurels. There's still an awful lot of effort needed. I think if we work with these networks and we work increasingly with the hosting communities and make linkages among those communities, employers, and all the settlement services there, we'll be able to do a better job of attracting francophone and minority groups to those communities.
