As I understood the situation, when Mr. Dion was the minister, he considered the idea of having an official languages action plan. He wanted to set a new objective for the government, in addition to what it was already doing. Specifically, that meant providing support to such sectors as health care, something that was new at the time. No significant efforts were being made in the health care arena back then, so he wanted to create a measure that would have real teeth.
The plan also included targets around the number of Canadians who would learn both official languages, in terms of students graduating from immersion programs and so forth. Objectives were attached to that official languages plan, which brought together all of the government's initiatives under a single banner. That's what was done in the first incarnation of the action plan. My understanding is that subsequent governments did more or less the same thing, but in a different way.
The government's efforts should not end with the roadmap. Other measures are surely needed, hence the importance of properly evaluating the roadmap's impact. That means figuring out exactly where the money was spent, what it was spent on, and what impact it had, in order to determine whether the tool is meeting communities' needs, not to mention the government's. If not, the government will need to think about how it can do a better job under the next action plan, if there is one.