As an agent of Parliament, I find there are two areas in which mastery of both official languages is essential for me. One is to communicate with members of this committee in either official language, in the language of choice of the members of the committee, or else to communicate with the general public, who want to be able to communicate with me in their language of choice, and also, as somebody who has been given leadership responsibilities, to be able to communicate with my employees in their language of choice.
I said at the beginning that there were two areas, but actually, those three leadership qualities all require bilingualism as an essential quality: an ability to deal with parliamentarians, an ability to deal with the general public, and an ability to deal with one's own employees.