Thank you, Mr. Chair.
From what has been heard in the news, and what the data and studies indicate, bilingualism has not been doing all that well over the last few years. The government's duty is to uphold the Official Languages Act and offer services in both languages.
A law passed about 25 years ago states that the Federal Court must hold its hearings in both official languages, in the language chosen by its clients. The same thing holds for the Federal Court of Appeal.
The Commissioner of Official Languages conducted a study on access to justice in both official languages and made recommendations on this matter. Mr. Gourde talked earlier about safety, but here, we are talking about official languages. Is he going to say that the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights should do this study? What we are really dealing with here is access to justice in both official languages. It would be worthwhile for the Minister of Justice to come and explain his strategy to us and what he intends to do. It has been said that the number of francophones who learn English is higher. Mr. Daniel will be happy to hear it. However, the percentage of anglophones who learn French is going down.
We talked about Supreme Court justices. Lawyers' organizations throughout the country have said that there is a big enough pool of bilingual lawyers to support the motion on bilingual Supreme Court justices. It was the government who said that there weren't enough. Perhaps enough bilingual people or francophones have not been appointed to the Federal Court. Perhaps it was not sufficiently forward-looking. It was the government that argued that the pool of bilingual lawyers was not big enough.
There is also the Commissioner of Official Languages. He is mandated to conduct studies and made recommendations in this matter. I don't see why the government would refuse to have a minister come before our committee. What are our committees good for, if ministers don't want to appear before them and answer our questions?
Mr. Chair, we should ask you to move another bill to require that ministers appear before committees. That would be a great initiative coming from you.