Thank you, my dear colleague. You bring up a number of points.
For a long time, school boards—principally francophone school boards, but also the anglophone school boards in Quebec—have told us that they are concerned by the lack of transparency in a number of provinces and territories in the way in which federal funds allocated to minority school systems are spent. For francophones, I am talking about teaching in French as a first language, not a second language. Basically, the provinces consult the school boards very little in order to establish their budgets and their funding. That has direct consequences on the attractiveness of francophone schools in minority situations and on the decision of families to send their children to them or not.
So we decided to take a strong position and require provinces and territories to be transparent with their francophone school boards and to consult them. In addition, the recent budget provides more money for minority school boards, which is good news. This is the first time that the federal government has provided money in such clear terms for francophone school boards outside Quebec and anglophone school boards in Quebec. The increased funding will make minority schools more attractive, as they are often in competition with immersion schools. In fact, it is recognized that linguistic assimilation is greater when a rights holder, a child of a francophone family, for example, goes to an anglophone majority school, even in an immersion program.