Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My colleague Monsieur Arseneault stole some of my thunder there, but I want to get back to the focus, which is that we have an amendment in front of us. That's the focus of the conversation.
I'm subbing in. I have one of the nicest ridings in Canada. It has a borough in it that has bilingual status, which I'm really happy about. I make sure that my riding provides services in both official languages, because we're about service.
The point of this amendment, I think, captures a lot of what we're hearing today. We're all saying the same thing. We're all saying that it is incredibly important that Canadians be served in the language of their choice of the two official languages, and I think this encompasses that. There are concerns, whether it be a contract that has the capacity to provide services in French or a contract able to provide services in English. I think it's really important. If we're going to do this as a committee and we want to take seriously official languages and the importance of supporting both official languages, then I think this amendment captures that.
I like the idea that we've put in there four meetings. Maybe it's debatable how many we need, but I think we're all in agreement. That was where I was hoping to get to. The mandate of this committee and the amendment in front of us is to talk about the importance of supporting both official languages and making sure we do everything in our power to support those two official languages.
I know that my colleague Monsieur Beaulieu brought up earlier whether there was French writing on warnings on packaging or something. In Quebec, in my riding, in the middle of the pandemic, at the worst part of the pandemic, my anglophone community did not get any information from the Quebec government. It was only unilingual, in French. It took a couple of weeks before we got the notices in English.
If we're going to talk about providing services to Canadians and supporting both official languages, I think it is an absolutely non-partisan way to have Monsieur Godin's motion before us with an amendment to say.... If we're going to look at it, let's look at it. Let's do it right.
Thank you.