Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I thank the witnesses very much for being here with us today.
In seven minutes I'm going to try to paint a picture of the situation and explain how I see it. Afterwards, you may provide me with information.
My colleague, Mr. Généreux, who certainly has his heart in the right place, did not mention that it was the Conservative government that shortened the census form. That is a very important aspect that should be mentioned. The other very important aspect is that if children who are rights holders do not go to French schools, they can lose their status, which is very serious. This saddens me.
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has existed for 35 years, more than half my age. That said, this is really a propitious time for change. We are really at the crossroads. In my opinion, the moment is ideal, because there are a lot of adjustments to be made.
First I want to talk about common law; I like it a lot because it depends on precedents. However, sometimes we have to wait a long time before we see results, and that is in fact the problem. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms says that there are three groups of Canadians who hold the right to instruction in the language of the minority. What I like, and it paves the way for change today, is that our friend Mr. Corbeil from Statistics Canada confirmed in the Senate on December 20, 2016—two months ago—that the census only involves subsection (1) of section 23 of the Charter. And so he clearly admitted that for 35 years, we have not been doing the work that needed to be done under subsections (2) and (3) of section 23. That is crucial. It paves the way for change.
Allow me to give you a brief history of the situation.
In 1990, in the Mahe ruling, the court said that we had to have numerical criteria, numbers, quantified data.
In 2006, there was a very good survey on the vitality of minorities that put forward numbers that were much higher than those that were published previously. Even the Commissioner of Official Languages said that the exercise was very, very commendable and that we had to continue to conduct such surveys. What happened? No such survey has been done since 2006. It's unfortunate that the commissioner said that. If he had not, perhaps the surveys would have continued.
That said, in 2016—we are getting closer to the current day—the Supreme Court of British Columbia said, as you mentioned, that the provinces had to have this data and that this necessary and reliable information had to be provided. The story kind of reminds me of Christopher Columbus.
As a former director general, I feel uncomfortable today. I was director general for 11 years. I worked with the data that Statistics Canada provided. There were 8,000 rights holders in Nova Scotia. There were 4,000 in my association, so 50% of the whole. However, the math had not been done correctly. It was 50% under subsection (1) of section 23. Thirty-five years later, we are still asking ourselves questions on this. It means that as directors general of all of the school boards, it was incumbent upon us by virtue of our position, our role, and as employees, to make sure that we offered these services to the rights holders. We did not do so because we were not aware of the data relating to subsections (2) and (3). That is a mortal sin and I feel very bad.
I will ask you three quick questions.
First of all, how do you feel, Mr. Paul? You spent 31 years as a school principal, as director general, and now you are director general of the Fédération nationale des conseils scolaires. What do you think about that? What do you think about the fact that we were unable to provide services to all of those students?