Thank you.
I would just say that the problem lies with the Department of Citizenship and Immigration. I don't agree that it's the fault of Canada's Parliament or governments of any stripe. It's the department's problem. It sets peculiar objectives.
Unfortunately, apart from my respect for the Standing Committee on Official Languages, I must say that we have rarely been called upon by the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. And yet, that committee is responsible for criticizing and studying what the IRCC does. The Standing Committee on Official Languages ought not to be a catch-all. As soon as a problem arises, it shouldn't always end up with this committee. At some point, part of the burden will have to be shared.
In dealing with this specific issue, a particular conclusion will inevitably be reached, which is that IRCC put all its eggs in one basket—the Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver regions—and to hell with the rest! IRCC regional funding is directly determined by the number of immigrants a province receives. If one province is at the low end at the outset, then that's where it will stay. At a certain point, as President Doucet was saying, it would perhaps be a good idea to try something else. We need to be a little bit more creative.
With respect to francophone immigration, when Quebec signed an agreement with the federal government, the IRCC officials breathed a side of relief because they would no longer have to deal with French. x
But a few years later, francophones came back and said they said to themselves that they were still burdened with the problem of French. People at the department still have not adjusted to the fact that they need to serve the francophonie outside Quebec.
That, members, is the problem.