Thank you for your questions.
I will begin with your second question. I agree with you that the francophone community, and in particular Saskatchewan's francophone community, is not a pawn in a political game. We are a vibrant community, essential to the lives of our children and our identity, part of who we are. Therefore, I believe it would be a mistake to use us a pawn in the next election.
With regard to recognition of the Saskatchewan francophone community by our province, I will be very honest and admit that we have made a lot of progress with some ministries, but that we do not even exist in the eyes of others. We have a Francophone Affairs Branch, which is a francophone office within the machinery of government. The branch facilitates contacts, but it is a service centre and a translation centre. It is not an advocacy centre, it is not a centre that helps us advance the files of the francophone community.
I will give a few examples of our relations with the ministries. We have excellent relations with the Ministry of Advanced Education at present. I said at present because, once again, things change in politics. We developed a document called “Vision 2030: Saskatchewan’s Post-Secondary Education in French”. We are beginning to make progress on identifying the direction of French-language education in Saskatchewan for the next few years. Both Collège Mathieu and La Cité universitaire francophone are partners in this process, and this made it possible to work with the provincial government and create a vision for the direction to take. That is excellent.
I will give you another example. When we told Saskatchewan's Ministry of Immigration that the federal government established a 4.4% target for francophone immigration, the one and only response we received was that it is a federal target and, therefore, it is up to the federal government to pay. The ministry does not want to help or support us.