First, with respect to the Federal Court of Appeal's decision in Fédération des francophones de la Colombie-Britannique v. Canada (Employment and Social Development), it is important to remember that we had been receiving complaints since 2018 under part VII of the Official Languages Act and that they were admissible. This means that it was clear that some federal institutions had violated the Official Languages Act. However, given the principles of the rule of law, because of the Gascon decision, the complaints were inevitably unfounded, because it was a very general interpretation of the act with respect to federal institutions. Now, these part VII complaints can be fully investigated.
As far as COVID-19 is concerned, from the outset, there were difficulties in terms of communications. We had to intervene in March and early April with certain federal institutions to ensure that their communications were in both official languages. We received complaints about Health Canada, when it allowed unilingual labelling of health products. Some communications were made with certain applications such as Switch Health, for example, and were not in both official languages.
The pandemic revealed gaps in the federal government's ability to communicate in both official languages. The capacity was not there. We do not want to go through a pandemic again, but I think we should learn from this pandemic for future emergencies, which will certainly be numerous. We need to be prepared now, not after the event.