You'll notice that having children is being put off to a later date. Childbirth is not a number one priority for young married couples or couples that get together.
Certainly the language issue is a big challenge for us to produce bilingual graduates, and it takes a lot of money to do that.
This responsibility of the neighbouring francophone school board was not a burden.
We do it out of our existing funds, and we need more funds to carry that out.
Then there's the recognition in those communities of sustaining small schools. Nobody wants to hear that their small school is going to be closed. If you're in the vicinity of Montreal, people will tell you if you close one school here in Montreal, it's still a tragedy despite the fact that you have to commute a few kilometres to another. In the country, you're talking 20, 30, 40, or 50 kilometres to the next school, so when you put an end to that school, bingo.
We require help in maintaining those schools, physical accommodations that have to be changed, and schools that don't have a gymnasium. You have helped us with those structures through that Canada-Québec Entente. We need to expand on that.
They are also beneficial to CLCs, because if you have, for instance, a national art gallery attached to your school, and I jest.... If you do have an auditorium attached to your school, you can bring people in for the arts and drama, which is part of the culture that has to be perpetuated and maintained. People will rally to support their school when they know that it is a centre of community life. That is very important to us.
The CLCs are new. They are taking hold. They're bringing communities together. Communities are turning more and more to their English-speaking school that has a CLC attached to it or that is becoming a CLC for services.
Rather than knocking on 15 doors, those schools are becoming un guichet unique for a lot of our community members. It's not a new idea in the French communities of Canada. Many of them have asked for money for the physical expansion of their schools and for physical projects. I remember reading one. I think it was in the Saint-Boniface area and how the attitude of the whole community, and toward their own French language, changed when they brought in a new gymnasium and an auditorium. It became like a British pub, a centre for people to meet.