Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll probably be the last speaker.
It appears to me that there is either a disconnect or a mismatch between policy direction and allocation.
I come from countries where people do speak multiple languages. In Canada, of course, I recognize the fact that this is a bilingual country and that I have to learn two languages. The reality is that language itself should be economically driven.
If government policy is to allocate resources to driving a bilingual culture, then there should be an effort across the board here to develop the economy first in those multiple languages. Also, because we live in a much smaller world today, the language of commerce, as we saw, is going to be English, Chinese, Hindi, or even, in the Middle East, Arabic, and so on. The strength of an economy driven in the French language is mostly in francophone Africa and the Caribbean, as in Haiti, or France. Yes, in Canada we also have a centre of a francophone economy.
My question for the panel is, if you wish to make a recommendation to federal politicians, what should the weighting be? To me, it doesn't make sense to just pour a lot of resources into the French language when for people that we bring in either as immigrants or that we educate, that will not offer a job opportunity.
Having worked in Australia and Southeast Asia, I increasingly see that even in Australia, they're saying that they need to be a bilingual country, whether in English and Chinese, or English and Japanese, or English and Korean.
I'd like to hear some of your comments, please, Mr. Boileau.