I think there are challenges associated with advancing the condition of some of those communities, particularly the ones outside Montreal. There are also challenges for English speakers in Montreal, as we know. Again, these are all connected to the politics and jurisdictional disputes and respective interests of some of the elected officials as they determine that protection of French, which is a valid objective in Quebec, is in some ways threatened by the presence of the English language, and the communities that express themselves in that language. We've seen episodes of how that plays itself out.
I know the time's limited. The best way the federal government can help, in that there are administrative arrangements and understandings we know about.... One example of this is immigration. If you're an English-speaking immigrant and you come to Quebec, the extent to which you'll be recognized as such by the Government of Quebec is challenging, because of these administrative arrangements that everyone seems reasonably comfortable with not shaking up. The federal government can offer more resources in those areas to assist those communities in various ways to secure and continue to operate in their language without necessarily contravening the jurisdictional issues for Quebec.
One of the ways I was going to suggest to help communities in general is with investing considerably in technologies, at least as far as federal services are concerned, and ensuring that our technologies, which are going to increasingly be areas where people secure services, are provided in both English and French as widely as possible. This way, the geographic situation you find yourself in is at least in part remedied by our ability to furnish services. I want to ensure that my robots are bilingual. I think it's very important that my voice assistants, even though they pronounce “chemin Décarie” very badly, be able to communicate effectively in both languages.
As a country, we must invest considerably in ensuring that we maximize the opportunity for communities, given their geographic circumstances, to benefit to the best degree possible from the technologies that will in future provide a lot of services that would otherwise not be provided that way.
