Thank you very much.
Good morning, Monsieur Paradis, Monsieur Choquette and members of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Official Languages. It is our pleasure to be with you again as we all continue to contemplate the modernization of the Official Languages Act.
We are reminded, in the year of the act's 50th anniversary, that, sadly, we are a long way from realizing the dream of ensuring respect for English and French as official languages across Canada. We are also reminded of the inherent limitations of a federal act to make this goal a reality in a federal system, where the provinces have jurisdiction over so many areas critical to the vitality of our official language minority communities. We, Canada's English and French minority communities, continue to face provincial governments who do not always respect their constitutional language rights obligations and who make decisions, within the bounds of their own legislative powers, that negatively impact the ability of French and English Canadians to receive critical services in their official language.
The QCGN has stood and will continue to stand in support of the French minority communities in their fight to acquire and protect their language rights, institutions and public services in French. We commend the members of this committee for their proactive public statements and interest, particularly in support of our Franco-Ontarian cousins and our Acadian cousins in New Brunswick. We also hope that this committee and other leaders in the national official languages structure will speak up to denounce and take to task the Government of Quebec for their unilateral decision to transfer one of our minority schools to a majority board. We would also welcome comment, in this anniversary year of the Official Languages Act, on the pictures of “emergency room” being crudely taped over at the Lachute hospital and a number of other signs being removed.
We remind the committee of the Official Languages Act's purpose of ensuring respect for English and French as the official languages of Canada and the equality of status and equal rights and privileges as to their use and status. This includes the conscious and demonstrated leadership of parliamentarians to equally concern themselves with the challenges faced by English and French linguistic minorities where they exist across the country.