The Action Plan for Official Languages, 2018-2023: Investing in Our Future, announces major investments in education and early childhood services in the minority language. The CSF is grateful for the federal government's efforts in this regard. We are delighted to note that the government has heard the concerns that your committee raised about the importance of early childhood and the need to support it.
Thanks to your work in 2012 and 2016, as well as the work done by the Standing Senate Committee on Official Languages in 2005 and 2017, some structural problems that need permanent solutions have been identified. We are grateful for the work that has been done in that area.
We continue to take the position that the problems we are experiencing cannot be solved by an nth action plan or another protocol. Although the government has promised to make changes, we point out today that the action plan has a fundamental shortcoming: it proposes no permanent solution with regard to education and early childhood.
We have said it before and we say it again today: the difficulties that the Conseil scolaire francophone de la Colombie-Britannique faces are structural. We need permanent solutions.
The investments announced are a step in the right direction and are necessary without question. However, upholding the rights of British Columbia's French-language community is not solely a matter of distributing money, especially if the financial support is not effectively targeted. Genuine respect for the rights of the francophone community will involve the modernization of the Official Languages Act. That is why we would like to take advantage of your study on the action plan to ask you to recommend some amendments to the Official Languages Act.