Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for being here, gentlemen.
Mr. Taillefer, thank you very much for your presentation. I especially want to thank you for the first two paragraphs of your brief. In the first paragraph, you say you would be remiss if you did not mention that you had hoped that the government would hold a proper consultation. I fully agree with you. A committee like ours is in no way equipped to conduct a professional consultation, since the atmosphere is sometimes very politically charged and we have only two hours a day, twice a week. That does not constitute a professional consultation.
This decision by the government came at midterm. We actually learned about it three months after we began our study and had met with people. So we have questioned witnesses without even knowing that our mandate was to hold a proper consultation for the purposes of studying the roadmap. I think this shows the government's contempt for the committee and our communities. I thank you for highlighting that.
Furthermore, I'd like to thank you for talking about the 2007 Summit of Francophone and Acadian Communities of Canada. I took part in that summit as an observer. It was a real exercise involving the entire community and its constituents. All the organizations, everyone signed the plan in the end. So I think that the government could draw inspiration from that for the renewal of the roadmap, which has already been decided, as announced by Bernard Valcourt in Newfoundland and Labrador. He said that the funding for the next roadmap would be reduced. I don't know why we are being asked to continue to carry out this exercise, but we are going to do it.
You both talked about welcoming newcomers, and I thank you for that. Since we are being asked to hold a consultation, I am going to do so. I am going to send you a report. In the previous Parliament, the committee did a study on immigration that was not completed. It had done some good collaborative work. The committee had tabled the report to Parliament. However, the government called an election before it could respond to the report. The committee of the current Parliament has not yet looked at the report again nor obtained a response from the government regarding its recommendations, which basically touch on the points you are raising. I am going to send it to you. Would you please respond to this report so that the committee can at least benefit from your knowledge and your concerns in this respect? It's true that it's important for the future of education in our communities. So I thank you for raising this point. I'll send you the report once I'm back in my office. I also see that my assistant, who is in the room, is taking notes.
You also spoke about early childhood. Could you please briefly give me your comments because I want to take the rest of the time to talk about education. Early childhood is part of that. The federal government had signed agreements with all the provinces, and each of them involved early childhood for linguistic minorities. In each case, the linguistic minorities had applauded these agreements, but the first thing the new Conservative government did in 2006 was to announce that it would abolish these agreements. Could you please comment on this?