I want to tell you something. If you want to motivate your students to keep at it, let them know that this committee has made a recommendation to the House of Commons that from this day forward and forever there will be 10 leadership positions that answer to Parliament, where it is mandatory that they be bilingual. Never again are we going to have an auditor general who is not bilingual the day he starts work. So make sure that dropout rate goes down.
In the city of Ottawa there are about 120,000 residents who, like me, were born in a French-speaking milieu and who by the force of events came to speak and understand both languages, and so are bilingual. There are 120,000 of us, but did you know that in Ottawa there are 180,000 of you anglophones who also understand and speak both languages? That, to a great measure, is to the credit of your school board. Your school board has been in this business from day one. I think that Le Phare Elementary School was probably the first one. I remember the leaders of the day.
In the way you use language, French and English, not one of us is French or English. We're all Canadians. We are French speaking or English speaking, or in the end bilingual, but we're not French and English.
I said what I wanted to say.
Mr. Morrow, I found your experience rather interesting. You said you did not go to a French immersion school—you know, in France they do not use the word immersion; they use the word “plongée”—dive. So, where did you learn to speak French?
