Mr. Chair, my questions again will be for Mr. Lepage and Mr. Corbeil.
In May 2013, the Conference Board of Canada put out a report, “Mid-Sized Cities Outlook”. It stated that 50% of mid-sized cities in Canada hadn't recovered from the recession.
I'd like to focus on New Brunswick in particular, because there are numerous towns in New Brunswick that are showing a lot of challenges. If we look at Miramichi, the report stated that the economic output has declined every year since 2005. Its 2012 real GDP and employment levels were less than half of what they were eight years ago. Then, if you look at other mid-sized cities, such as Bathurst and Edmundston, and take a look at Fredericton's economy, it declined in 2011 and 2012. Miramichi is the largest city in northern New Brunswick, with about an 8.5% francophone population.
Could you explain some of the challenges that New Brunswick is going through? Is the treatment of official language communities in New Brunswick playing a factor in these statistics that we see with regard to economic performance?