Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd like to thank the commissioner for being here this morning.
I appreciate that you mentioned education in your report. Even though education is a provincial issue and we are very limited in what we can do, could we push further? We want to promote linguistic duality across Canada. Actually, we might have tools available, but we may not want to develop them or have refrained from doing so. I'll give you an example.
There are some programs for children aged two to five years in French and others in English. However, we don't see programs where the content is half and half. This would enable French-speaking communities to have contact with English and English-speaking communities to have contact with French. The same program could go all across Canada. We would be promoting our country, what we are, our culture and our linguistic duality, all at the same time.
I don't know if CBC/Radio-Canada could have this in its mandate. In any event, its mandate is to unite all Canadians. Could finding a way to include educational programs for young children, and perhaps for another age group, be an integral part of its programming? Perhaps it could conduct a pilot project on this.
I think this would help promote linguistic duality. It would enable children starting school to have a much stronger base in both languages and would follow them throughout their education. When a child gets to the secondary and post-secondary level, they must already have reached a certain level. But we are already losing a lot of people. However, if the base was broadened, that would enable all Canadians to discover both official languages.
I would like to hear what you have to say about that, Mr. Fraser.