I know some of you don't want to hear us, but I think the idea behind this motion is precisely to avoid having to debate or listen to each other too much longer. However, for the future of French, we won't back down because it must not continue declining.
The Official Languages Act is the main obstacle in the fight against the decline of French in Quebec and elsewhere in Canada, where I think it does an inadequate job of ensuring the survival of that language. Positive measures currently only serve to support English. Approximately $1.55 billion was allocated from 1995 to 2022 under the development of official-language communities program, which is one of the official language support programs.According to earlier studies, $1.1 billion was allocated to the English-language education system in Quebec, which was previously overdeveloped in the 1960s.
The Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada, the FCFA, even conducted a study and released a report entitled The Heirs of Lord Durham, in which Quebec anglophones were compared to francophones outside Quebec, and there was a follow‑up to that too. The authors found that Quebec anglophones were in a better position than Quebec francophones, based on a number of factors, such as schools, graduation rates and so on. However, what authorities have done is reinforce English-language institutions in the only francophone state in North America. We constantly put questions to the minister, but she doesn't answer.
Then there's the enhancement of official languages program. In the context of the B & B Commission, it was said that the purpose of the Official Languages Act wasn't to make everyone bilingual because, if everyone were bilingual, the minority language would definitely go out the window and become useless. Despite that fact, a significant amount of funding, more than $15 million a year, is allocated to English-language instruction in French-language schools. That's virtually the only funding provided on the francophone side. To be completely honest, there are 4 million—