I'm coming back to the third sub-amendment and to the importance of proceeding with clause-by-clause consideration.
For a while now, I've been discussing federal jurisdiction, that is to say the federal government's interference in Quebec's health system. I think this is a major argument and, as it happens, something that's also in the news.
I've asked the minister on many occasions if the government was going to present positive measures with regard to French, but I've never received an answer from her. All I'm told is that the Liberal government was the first to recognize the decline of French.
Jean-Pierre Corbeil, the former head of Statistics Canada, often tries to deny in the media that French is declining. He has also said it directly. You'd think his mandate over much of his career was to deny the decline of French.
According to an article published today, French is declining in all regions of Quebec, not French as a mother tongue or language used in the home, but as a first official language spoken.
Even Mr. Micone, who called me a linguistic racist in Le Devoir, seemed to say we shouldn't discuss French as a mother tongue. However, my open letter, cosigned by a dozen individuals, made no mention of French as a mother tongue.
In an article published on the weekend, Michel Paillé claimed that Mr. Micone had made a reading error because the figures that I discussed concerned the language spoken in the home. It would have been even more tragic if I'd been referring to the mother tongue.
Statistics Canada is an organization controlled by the federal government and has confused the issue for years. It seems to be more open now, but it will be difficult to deny reality at some point. And I think reality is catching up. It will be unfortunate if Quebec doesn't wake up and realize the situation.
Everyone knows the story of the frog: if you put it in boiling water, it has a chance to react, but if you put it in a bucket of cold water and then slowly raise the temperature, the frog is gradually numbed and paralyzed. We don't want that to happen to Quebec.