A francophone institution is currently part of the Legislative Assembly. That's a symbolic aspect.
However, another aspect is much more important. The Office of the French Language Services Commissioner isn't an organization of last resort like the Office of the Ontario Ombudsman.
Our mandate is to prevent; we're proactive. We do an ombudsman's work, and we receive complaints, but we don't do just that. We play a protective and promotional role.
As I mentioned earlier, in my introduction, the very fact that we're talking about another university is important. Of course, it's been percolating for 40 years, but here's another example.
In 2012, when we tabled our report on an investigation that we had conducted at my initiative, not in response to complaints, we did so precisely to emphasize the lack of French-language programs available in central-southwestern Ontario, a growing region of 250,000 inhabitants.
Half of francophones in the Toronto area aren't native-born Canadians. It's a very diverse population. Eight out of 14 members of my team were not born in Canada. This population has the largest percentage of francophones who are studying at the postsecondary level and, paradoxically, the fewest institutions: at the time, in 2012, between 0% and 3% of postsecondary institutions were francophone.
The entire debate on this project and on the very essence of the university was restarted thanks to the work of the commissioner, if you will. The ombudsman won't be able to do that; it's not in his DNA to do it. That has nothing to do with Paul Dubé, who is an excellent ombudsman; it's simply not in an ombudsman's DNA.