Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would like to thank the witnesses for being here with us this morning.
My questions are for Mr. Lepage because here at the Standing Committee on Official Languages, we obviously consider the entire country and we are working on a bill that seeks to update the Official Languages Act in Canada.
Mr. Lepage, you provided proof that French is declining everywhere in Canada and I think we are all in agreement on this fact. In your presentation, you gave a series of statistics on the number of francophone students in provinces other than Quebec. Then you spoke of righting the wrongs of the past.
I think that updating the Official Languages Act is a step in the right direction. It is true that we cannot undo all the wrong done to the French language in the past. We have to be realistic.
I now have more pointed questions to ask you. I would like your advice so that we can do our work properly and ensure that the bill has teeth, is effective and stops the decline of the French language.
Do you think that having a central organization is vital to being able to efficiently update the Official Languages Act?
If we do not amend the bill in order to designate Treasury Board as the central organization, do you think that our efforts would be a waste of time and that the French language will decline further?