Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
My first questions are for Senator Joyal.
Mr. Joyal, you probably don't remember this, but the first time we met, I was attending the CEGEP in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu. It was 1990, and our discussion was about Meech Lake.
I really liked your intervention on the importance of immigration to ensure that there is a critical mass of francophones in certain communities. Otherwise, the population could shrink and it would become difficult afterwards to maintain resources and services in French.
Quebec controls—you spoke about this earlier—all economic immigration. As Quebec assigns a lot of points to people who know French, this facilitates the arrival of francophone immigrants. We saw this with the people from Maghrebian communities who have settled in Quebec over the past few years.
I'd like to hear what you have to say about what the federal government might do to attract more francophone immigrants to communities outside Quebec to maintain these critical masses.