Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My thanks to all of you for joining us today. It is truly an honour for us to welcome you and be able to have these discussions with you.
Two days ago, I moved a motion before this committee asking to find out the number of people currently in the express entry pool, their country of origin, their languages spoken, including their proficiency in one official language or both, their level of education, and their first language spoken if, of the two first languages, the second language was French.
In the House, I approached Minister Alexander to tell him about the motion and that we wanted him to provide us with those numbers prior to his appearance before the committee, which should be soon. He told me that he didn’t think those numbers really existed, but that he was going to do his best to obtain as much information as possible. He added that he recognized that recruiting francophone immigrants is a problem in this country.
It is an obligation under the law.
Could the members opposite be less noisy, please?
Under the law, there is an obligation to recruit a certain percentage of francophone immigrants and to maintain the linguistic duality. Ms. Kenny, you think that we are heading toward a significant decline in that area.
I have several questions.
Ms. Kenny, your presentation was very intense. You even said:
…more than 98% of the immigrants that Canada welcomes outside Quebec are anglophones, compared to francophone immigration rates of less than 2%... Anything that might have made a real difference to French-language immigration into our communities has been eliminated.
Are we going back to the far-reaching plan of 1840, which was designed to assimilate the francophones in this country outside Quebec at all costs?