Good afternoon.
I found the presentations very interesting. I've especially taken note of the more specific suggestions to amend the Official Languages Act to include measures respecting the Emergency Measures Act.
Like Mr. Généreux, I notice the Commissioner of Official Languages is sounding the alarm once again, even though official languages have been recognized for 51 years. We can see that they clearly aren't integrated. I wonder whether it's the language planning model underlying the official bilingualism statute that doesn't work. For 51 years, we've seen the rate of anglicization and assimilation of francophones outside Quebec constantly rise, and the demographic weight of francophones outside Quebec is declining as a result.
The same is somewhat true of bilingualism. We're told that the increase in bilingualism in Canada comes mainly from Quebec. Outside Quebec, 85% of francophones are bilingual, compared to only 7% of anglophones. The bilingualism rate among francophones in Quebec has risen slightly to 40%. From 2001 to 2016, those rates have increased from 36.6% to 40% among francophones and from 61.1% to 69% among anglophones. That appears to be leading us to a decline.
We're also told that Statistics Canada's linguistic forecasts and projections suggest no advance in bilingualism among the English mother tongue population of Canada outside Quebec. There's a growing gap between bilingualism in Quebec and that outside Quebec.
The very principle of the Official Languages Act is based on a planning model, on institutional bilingualism and individual rights, although there's a degree of proportionality based on the criterion of where numbers warrant. Models that are deemed to be able to protect minority languages are based more on the principle of territoriality.
Do you think improvements can be achieved if more sweeping changes aren't made to the Official Languages Act?