Thank you, Ms. Lapointe.
Let me say that the investment fund is to encourage Quebec businesses to extend their activities outside Quebec, but within Canada. So these are national investments.
The best response I have for you is something that was prepared for us in 2013 by the Conference Board of Canada. With the support of Industry Canada at that time, RDÉE Canada and CEDEC commissioned a report called “Canada, Bilingualism and Trade”. I'm pleased that all of you have it in front of you.
I'm pleased to say that it's on the desks of most people involved in official languages right now, I think because it builds the argument that talks about bilingualism being an economic advantage for us in a competitive environment. In the economy, our ability not as individuals but as a nation to engage with French-speaking countries for contractual purposes and what have you is an economic advantage. Likewise, our ability to do so in English is also an advantage.
For the first time, we believe, that is actually quantified in this report. There's actually a very solid argument that for every dollar invested in bilingualism, we see an economic return. That's very important.
The opportunity that we discuss with respect to Quebec-based businesses understanding and engaging in markets outside of Quebec is very much associated with language. I'll give you a very practical example of this close to where Madam Boucher is located.
It's the Chambre de commerce et d'industrie de Québec.
With the chamber, we did some work a few years ago. We worked with the insurance companies and some of the high-tech companies in the area. We asked what would be the impact on their bottom line if they were able to access English-speaking markets. The vast majority of those companies were not engaged in accessing those markets at that time.
They said they would love to, but that the one thing that was impossible for them to do was engage bilingual workers who would enable them to do that. They said that was great, but they didn't know how to do it because they couldn't find the workers. There's a very direct economic advantage to those individuals simply picking up a phone or writing an email in English to be able to access those markets elsewhere.
The consequence of that, of course.... When we talk about community economic development and this being so important, our goal is not exclusively to make that business wealthy or to make its shareholders wealthy. It is also to create the demand for those bilingual employees who are going to need to be part of a growing and expanding business. In some ways, we are stimulating the demand to sustain our communities.
The same is true if we look to the rest of Canada. I had the privilege of working in Toronto for a number of years, and I knew very well that the market I was working in, the financial industry, was reluctant to engage in the Quebec space.
CEDEC hosted a conference last March. I'm very proud of it. It was called “Doing Business in Quebec”. We attracted over 200 businesses, business owners, and entrepreneurs from across the country to come to Montreal to Place Bonaventure to talk about what it is like to do business here and what the advantages are. We had groups like Investissement Québec there. We had any number of groups that were there to really accompany these businesses that were looking at this as an opportunity. Most of them told us that they never really considered Quebec because they thought they had to work exclusively in French if they were working here, and they didn't know how to do that.
Bilingualism is a major asset. We actually believe that it creates significant economic opportunities, not only for the anglophone community in Quebec, but for the entire country. That is why we have made that recommendation.