Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I'll get right to the point. When the clerk contacted me about three weeks ago to appear once again before the committee, I consulted with the various members of the Réseau national de formation en justice and asked them what new information we could bring. You have already received thousands of pages of documents and heard hundreds of presentations.
So we focused on the following question that the committee might ask: what is your one priority in modernizing the act and what is the one single thing you would like to achieve? We have given this a lot of thought, and today, I will give you the answer.
As you know, the word “priority” defines where we spend our first dollar, not our last. For my part, based on my entire life experience, the top priority in modernizing the act has to do with demographics.
This is the only message I want to convey to you today: the modernized act must affirm in its objectives that the federal government wants to support—not promote, but support—a strong, stable and demographically resilient Canadian Francophonie.
Why? The answer is quite simple: demographics is the foundation for everything. Canada's public policies of the 1890s to World War I severely disadvantaged francophone immigration to Canada. These policies have had a devastating effect to this day. So we have an opportunity to turn the tide.
I want to talk to you a little bit about my personal history, which will help you better understand my message and the reason why I'm saying it's the priority today.
I am a Franco-Manitoban by birth and have lived in Ottawa since 1982. I am 68 years old. I was there on December 8, 1968, when the Honourable Gérard Pelletier came to Notre-Dame school in Saint-Boniface to tell us that his government would propose an official languages act the following year. I was 18 and I was one of the young people starting their adult lives.
I was there during the discussions about the patriation of the Constitution, during the time of the former Fédération des francophones hors Québec (FFHQ). I was there during the discussions about amending sections 41 and 42. For over 25 years, I have worked with at least about 10, if not 15, federal departments to implement sections 41 and 42 of the Official Languages Act. I was there when the first action plan was announced in 2003, and I am still here.
My professional life developed alongside the Official Languages Act. One of the topics you are studying deals with the impact of the act on daily life. If a journalist asked me what is the most important message to take away about the Official Languages Act, given my 50 years of experience as a member of the minority community, I would reply as follows. Without strong demographics, we have nothing: we have no services in French, we have no justice, we have no health care and we have no education.
I therefore ask the committee to recommend that a paragraph be added to the purpose of the act, which would read as follows:
The purpose of this Act [...] is to support a strong, stable and demographically resilient Canadian Francophonie in order to ensure the vitality of francophone minority communities, enrich and strengthen Canada's bilingual character and promote the use of both official languages.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.