Mr. Chair, think of a sentence like “Mom and Dad are having a baby”. As we know, mothers can have babies but fathers cannot. That is a fact. If we change the sentence to say “Dad and Mom are having a baby”, it's like saying that dad, rather than mom, will have the baby. It doesn't work that way.
It is the same thing here. Reversing the order in which Treasury Board and Canadian Heritage are mentioned totally changes the spirit of what we have been trying to do with this bill all along, which is to have a captain on the ship or a pilot in the plane. Someone needs to take the lead in getting this bill done and implemented.
I want to turn to Ms. Boyer and the public servants.
In our view, as long as there is a captain on board, the course of the ship can be altered and it can make it to a safe harbour. Implementing this proposed change would, once again, split the responsibility for implementing the Official Languages Act between Canadian Heritage and Treasury Board.
The act has existed for 50 years and we believe, although we may be wrong, that it should be administered by one specific organization, which would of course share its resources with Canadian Heritage and other institutions. We believe that the Treasury Board should be responsible, within the Canadian government, for implementing the Official Languages Act. We believe that would be the right thing to do.
As public officials, what do you think?