Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I wasn't able to attend the last meeting of the LANG committee because of a conflict. I'm sorry I missed it; it sounded like a very interesting meeting.
We're having a discussion about the study, the number of meetings, the witnesses. All are very important. I'm going to defer to the consensus on the appropriate number of meetings, although I worry that five might not be enough. Hear me out on my rationale.
I am sitting here in Treaty No. 1 territory, the homeland of the Métis nation. We have a significant Franco-Manitoban community. We are very proud of that as a nation. Manitoba is celebrating its 150th anniversary, brought about by whom? It was one Louis Riel, whom we have a day named after here in Manitoba. We're very proud of our Métis heritage and our French heritage here in Manitoba.
Mr. Chair, Manitoba is deep in code red. We have the highest infection rate per 100,000 people in the country. We went from zero infections in the summer to literally thousands now. Mr. Chair, we've had some 60 or more deaths in long-term care homes. The premier asked to have the Red Cross sent to our province, which we have done, and they are in four or five of these long-term care homes.
Mr. Chair, one of the big infection areas, one of the hot spots, is southern Manitoba, where we have significant francophone populations who are not getting the kinds of services they need in the language of their choice, which in that case is French.
As I've pointed out in other meetings, we have had challenges in our education system with not being able to find enough French-speaking teachers, and we have the same problem with health care professionals who can speak French.
Mr. Chair, I'd like to read from a chapter called “Access to and Use of Health Care Services in the Minority Language" in a very important study by a number of distinguished authors from the University of Ottawa, the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Moncton. I think the honourable members will be very interested in this, because our challenges in health care and in serving our minority communities predate the pandemic but have only grown worse.
I quote from this—