Thank you, Mr. Chair.
As an MP for the past 14 years, whenever I've looked at legislation, I have tried to look at it from the point of view of ensuring clarity and logic. Although I'm not a lawyer, I'm an engineer, and in engineering those two qualities of clarity and logic in anything that is written are particularly important.
The way I look at this bill, Bill C-13, the modernization of the Official Languages Act, is as follows.
It has two main purposes. Let's go back to fundamentals. First, it is to promote the two official languages that exist in this country across the country. Second, it is to protect the linguistic rights of minorities again across Canada, whether it's the anglophone rights of Quebeckers who are a minority within Quebec or the francophone rights of minorities living outside of Quebec. That is its fundamental purpose.
If we look at the Quebec Charter of the French Language, we see that this is a provincial charter. It is based on, and essentially is, Bill 96 as adopted by the National Assembly. Its focus, of course, is to address language rights within Quebec. One is federal and one is provincial, and yet that provincial law is being incorporated into a federal law, Bill C-13. I think we owe it to those who will be interpreting Bill C-13 in the future to achieve clarity and logic in the content of this bill. This is fundamentally important.
Whether we agree with Bill 96 or not is one matter, and I suspect that much of it will be probably settled in the courts. Either way, it is a provincial law that is being put into a federal law. That to me is not logical, and it does not make for clarity. It should not be in a federal bill, so that in the future, when the Parliament of Canada does have to interpret Bill C-13, there will be greater clarity in its interpretation.
The proposed amendment, LIB-4, is an eloquent way to, yes, recognize that the National Assembly of Quebec has determined that French is the official language within its sphere of jurisdiction, which we fully recognize, but at the same time it achieves greater clarity by removing something that should not be in this bill.
I appeal to you as legislators who believe in clarity and I'm sure believe in logic to accept this amendment.
Thank you.