Thank you very much.
I am really very proud of everything we have accomplished in Ontario in the area of francophone affairs. But I want this to be very clear; I did not do this alone. I did it with Franco-Ontarians, with members of the opposition, and with my community. I was alone in cabinet, but I felt the presence of 600,000 Franco-Ontarian men and women behind me. That gave me the strength.
You mentioned France Gélinas, with whom I have always worked in close cooperation. She is also a great defender of francophone rights in Ontario and she chairs the Ontario section of the Assemblée parlementaire de la Francophonie. Recently, I received the Order of la Pléiade. She sent me a lovely card that I wish I had brought for you today. I want to publicly thank her for the work she has done.
When I began work as a minister of francophone affairs, of course, I did not have a whole list of tasks to accomplish. Even though I had been active in the area of francophone affairs, I was new to government. It was the people who helped me to accomplish what was on my agenda, the things I wanted to get done.
The creation of the position of French language services commissioner was the biggest step forward in ensuring the permanence of services in French. It was established in two stages. Recently, I gave a speech about the creation of the position. Not everyone is in favour of the appointment of an independent and unelected officer of Parliament.
There were objections; they did not just come from the opposition but from a good number of my colleagues as well. So we set about reassuring them. In the first stage, the position was not independent. It reported to me. I was not very happy with that. I actually wanted it to be independent from the start. But a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, as they say. Although he reported to me, Commissioner Boileau always had all the independence he needed. He said so regularly in his addresses. The second stage consisted in handing over that independence to the commissioner.
TFO is a superb achievement, whose impact is felt not only in Canada, but also in the United States and elsewhere in the world. At the moment, the CEO of TFO is in South Africa to promote the channel. It is a model not only in Ontario but also for the world.