I want to continue a little further in the same vein. In fact, they are seeking more flexibility in a bill that defends one of the fundamental principles of our country: bilingualism.
We have seen what has come from flexibility. We have a unilingual anglophone Auditor General who currently would be unable to answer my questions. Earlier Mr. Fraser mentioned that he sometimes got help from someone to clarify a term. Yet he has not lost his position; his term has even been renewed. So I do not believe there is a major problem in that regard.
I want to mention another problem. My colleague has just read us a passage from the Official Languages Act. When I read the proposed amendment, I see it dilutes what that act provides. We are losing the continuity that we have in our way of defending and promoting bilingualism.
What act will take precedence if we wind up with another case like that of the Auditor General? In that case, we used flexibility and wound up with someone who can pronounce only every second word in his second language.
This amendment is not clear. It does not deal with the quality of skills at all. We are really diluting the objective we aim to achieve. I do not understand why we would want to leave loopholes—I am using an English word, but I hope you will not doubt the quality of my French. We are adding loopholes to the bill that could cause us more problems like the one we have experienced with the Auditor General.
So if the government really wants to promote official languages and to avoid a situation like the one we had with the Auditor General, I do not understand why we should dilute what is already clearly stated in the Official Languages Act and which already works very well.
We thought that was enough before we had a unilingual Auditor General. Here we are required to introduce a bill to solve problems that we have had. And they are trying to dilute it in a way that is not consistent with the Official Languages Act? I would like someone to explain to me the reasoning behind that because I do not understand it at all.