One thing the federal government can do is to support educational institutions that teach in French and provide an immersion context, such as Université de Saint-Boniface. I believe in Regina there's a campus, not a full university, but a section of the university, as there is in Alberta and in B.C. There is also Pointe-de-l'Église in Nova Scotia, among others, as well as Université de Moncton. There are a whole bunch.
With respect to collaborative leadership and the initial question of whether we agree with the idea of having all these different positions that have to be bilingual, in order to have an inclusive country that represents all of us from coast to coast to coast, we have to provide the time and the training so that we can all function well in both languages. If that is truly our goal, that means we're taking a person from the Northwest Territories who's a “keen bean” and who wants to be part of it and saying, “Great. We're going to help you with your language skills. If you don't speak both official languages, we're going to help you out so you can participate fully within this government structure”. That to me is so that we have an Inuk voice—let's pretend—and then we also have someone who can function in the two official languages.
Another part is that for post-secondary education at a master's and doctoral level there are NSERC and SSHRC grants and lots of federal grants, but there are getting to be fewer and fewer of them, which I think is highly unfortunate. I think this year fewer than 25% of people got them, and there is a lot of competition for them. I think it would be wonderful if people were encouraged to study and say, “Okay, I'm going to research this in my master's or doctoral degree, and I'm going to research it in my second language”. Why not?