Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Essentially, I am here not to bury Caesar but to praise him.
And who is Caesar? Caesar is the two founding nations thesis. Caesar is the effect of the two founding nations thesis, namely official bilingualism.
Official bilingualism and the two founding nations thesis are our founding principles, but in light of demographic change in our society over the past 40, 50, 60 years, we are now coming to a point where in fact diversity and greater diversity is challenging the two founding nations thesis. No longer, for example, in Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver are the old English and French language nations dominant. They are no longer dominant. They are no longer the host societies. They are no longer the societies that actually integrate people into Canadian society.
I do believe that what we should be talking about now is not official languages or official culture or official communities, because that is exclusionary. That is against the idea of greater accessibility and greater justice. What we should be talking about now is distinguishing between the language of officialdom versus the public language and the public need.
And what is the public need?
The public interest is far greater than just the interests of the English and French nations of Canada. We need greater access to services in languages other than English and French because people who come here or people who are raised here might not in fact be fluent or have mastered one of the official languages.
Our public institutions are obliged to ensure that these people can in fact have access to these services. The francophone community argues for the same thing for its nation. Other nations also deserve the same accessibility and the same equality. We don't get that, and I do believe that the reforms that are being proposed to the Official Languages Act are in fact contrary to the idea of administrative justice. They are contrary to the idea of greater accessibility. Again, with respect to indigenous languages, we have not integrated the Indigenous Languages Act into the Official Languages Act. We have not given proper place to various nations and various needs.
As I said before, the official languages or official culture is very narrow. It is exclusionary. It limits accessibility to our public institutions. We have to talk about the public need and the public voice, which is large and expansive and diverse, and our public institutions must actually serve those needs locally. It means saying that if you need services in a language other than English or French, we will try to offer you those services. If you need services to integrate into our economy, we'll do that for you.
Right now we're not doing that. Our institutions are not supporting multiculturalism, multilingualism; they are continuing to support this old idea of official languages and official bilingualism. It's no longer working, so I would call upon the government again to distinguish between the language of officialdom, which is internal, the internal expression of government, versus the public language and what the public need is and how the government communicates with the public. Those are very different ideas. Let's not stay stuck with this idea that we are a society founded by two founding nations. We're not. We're no longer there any more. That happened 150 to 200 years ago. We're no longer there, and I think we should reflect that in our legislation.
Thank you very much.