Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I also want to thank the witnesses.
Thank you very much for appearing before our committee.
I have seen the progress we have made as a country in promoting linguistic duality. I also understand that at the federal level we are officially bilingual, and we have a province that is officially bilingual, New Brunswick. Actually, I was in the province of New Brunswick when it was officially designated as bilingual. I was in military training there.
In your opinion, how should we approach this issue in order to explain to people that our linguistic duality is an enormous advantage and is not an artificial imposition? How can this message be delivered on the occasion of our 150th anniversary of Confederation in 2017? To speak another language is an advantage. I am telling you this because I am bilingual, but in Hungarian and Romanian, and I have a knowledge of French. It is very important to speak another language, and we have this golden opportunity to reach out to more people.
Moreover, how can we integrate our new and old immigrants in embracing enthusiastically our linguistic duality when they perceive this requirement of bilingualism as a barrier to accessing public service jobs in federal institutions? What would be your recommendation in this area? How can we reflect the perceived barrier in the 2017 celebration, which is not really a barrier? Having access to jobs can be an incentive for someone to learn both languages.