Obviously I'm just north of Toronto. I represent the riding of Richmond Hill and I'm very much a part of that community, and I feel a part of it, but be it ever so humble, there's no place like home. Certainly I feel I'm a Montrealer. I feel I'm a Quebecker, having grown up in an immigrant home, in a Greek home, primarily in the English community but very much a part of the bilingual fabric of Montreal.
I've heard the number of about a million English-speaking people in Quebec. I question that, because it's not the just the people who have English as their mother tongue. A lot of people are immigrants from ethnic communities who are moving to the country, and moving in the 1950s and the 1960s, the first language they learned when they came was English. If we put all those people together, I would suspect the number may be considerably higher than a million. Maybe, maybe not, but it certainly is as much of a challenge to find services in English in many parts of Quebec as it is to find French in other parts of Canada.
I take exception--and some of my colleagues may not share my view--when we refer to English Canadians or French Canadians as minority groups anywhere. I just don't like the word “minorities”. It's just a personal thing. I understand numbers; that's why we talk like that. It doesn't resonate well with me. To me, Canada is English and French, and it should be from coast to coast to coast. That's one of the reasons why I'm very happy to be part of this committee.
I want to talk a little bit about your conference. My colleague John Weston asked a few questions about it. Was it well-attended by seniors? What was the attendance at that conference?