The first priority in our community development plan 2012-2017 is access to services in English. You have to understand that we have to preface our comments by saying that we're in a unique space as English-speaking Quebeckers.
The whole mechanism around support to linguistic minority communities in Canada and the Official Languages Act is premised on the idea of a partnership with the provinces in a system that has concurrent jurisdiction. As an English-speaking community in Quebec we are the only jurisdiction in Canada that doesn't have a formal relationship with our provincial government. So before, Madame St-Denis talked about the concept of over the head of the provincial government. We don't quite see things that way. We see that we're concurrently governed by the Government of Canada and the Government of Quebec. The Government of Canada has an obligation toward our community, under law the Government of Quebec does not, strategically. We don't have that relationship.
So our specific challenge in our community is that when the federal government makes partnerships with provinces, as it should under the Official Languages Act, to support the vitality of linguistic minority communities, it's not possible in Quebec because Quebec doesn't have that relationship with us. So it has to have a more direct relationship with our community. So in our community wherever the federal government can have a direct relationship with us, it's better for us because we can access the support and we can help the vitality of our community. That's why we have the position we do.