In Alberta, where I am, the way funds are spent when the federal government sends them to provinces and territories changes depending on the party in power.
When sending these funds, if the federal government could require them to be earmarked for francophone minority communities, not used to subsidize something else, that would help us significantly. Then we would have a guarantee—not just hope as we do now—that these funds will come back to us.
Provincial organizations are responsible for negotiations, and they hope to be consulted on how funds are spent. It doesn’t happen in every province, and it can change from one year to the next. Since a new government is elected every four years, we have a tendency to hope that things might go better on a financial level, if it didn’t go as well during the last mandate. However, this is not something we can rely on.
Maybe the word “obligation” is not the one I should have used. Actually, I wanted to say we have to ensure that our organizations get targeted agreements.