Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My first motion is as follows:
That the Committee invite the Minister of Heritage before June 12, 2014 to appear in front of committee to explain why there is a delay in the payment of grants allocated to official languages groups by her department.
The reason I am calling on the committee to invite the minister is simple. The last time the minister came, she said that she was quite pleased to come to our committee. She is the minister responsible for official languages. This week, I saw her rise in the House and say that we could invite her to the committees because she enjoyed coming.
I think that the minister must come to our committee because the witnesses we've heard from so far and the people who call our offices are telling us that there is a delay in the payment of grants to the organizations. It is already mid-May.
Mr. Chair, the problem is that the organizations can't go through with their summer activities if the payments are made too late.
Mr. Chair, this is not your first day at the Standing Committee on Official Languages. You probably recall that the organizations said they had to use their credit cards to keep their employees paid or to pay for expenses. We don't want that to happen any more.
I remember when James Moore was the Minister of Heritage and he promised us that this would stop. He said the department would take the previous year's applications and process them in early spring. Once again, we hear that there are delays in the payments. Maybe the government has a good explanation, but we would at least like to hear that. We would like to be able to ask the minister questions to see what's going on and to determine what we could do to help these organizations.
Under the Roadmap for Canada's Official Languages, Canadian Heritage has responsibilities to the communities. The Roadmap for Canada's Official Languages is a mechanism the government put in place in order to grant funding. Under Part VII of the Official Languages Act, the government must promote the official languages and official languages minorities in Canada. All these organizations are in place.
I didn't think the payments would be late this year. Maybe the minister will tell us that the payments aren't late. I look forward to hearing what she has to say. According to what we've heard, we would say that Canadian Heritage employees are not communicating with the organizations to let them know where things stand and to reassure them.
Mr. Chair, that is one of the reasons I hope that the government side will vote with us. I don't know whether it'll be in camera or not. One thing's for sure: if we leave here after an in camera session, it won't be because they voted in favour of the motion. That would be too bad, yet again.
I therefore call on the Minister of Canadian Heritage to come here before June 12 to explain what is going on and to take questions. This is about her responsibility and the committee for which she is responsible.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.