Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The NDP unreservedly supports this amendment. We believe that the heads of large corporations ought to be subject to the Official Languages Act. I'd like to give you a few of my thoughts in this regard.
Apart from the fact that it's scandalous for the CEOs of Air Canada and Canadian national not to understand or speak French, I believe that it's really a question of accountability to Canadians and Quebeckers.
There is a reason why such corporations are subject to the act, and that's because they are the outcome of the dogmatic privatization of the neoliberal years. Canadians and Quebeckers are paying the price not only in terms of cuts and job losses and a decline in level of service, but they are also losing their language rights.
Ask any francophone public servant in the national capital region whether it's easy to work in French and whether their boss speaks French: all important meetings will of course be held in English, and if a francophone wants to argue a specific point of view, it will have to be in English.
The CEOs of these corporations are the CEOs of private corporations because the government privatized them. One of their few remaining obligations is compliance with the Official Languages Act. By appointing CEOs who could express themselves in only one official language, the corporations have repeatedly shown that they are not interested in respecting their social contract with us, including those working in Quebec, and whose CEOs can't even speak the official language of Quebecker.
I therefore support the Bloc Québecois amendment. It was a mistake to privatize these corporations, and at the very least, their CEOs should also be able to express themselves in French.