Thank you, Mr. Chair.
As I said earlier, most Statistics Canada employees are located in Sturgeon Falls, Ontario. The committee knows that Sturgeon Falls is the town where the first French-language secondary school in Ontario was opened, in 1971.
Mr. Beaulieu, since my ancestors settled here in 1870, we have developed the francophonie in the town, and there is a significant francophone community there.
I now want to talk about the economic development agencies. As you know, there are seven, including the Federal Economic Development Agency for Northern Ontario, or FedNor. Their mandate is very broad and they play a very strong role in relation to francophone communities and services in French.
Do the economic development agencies themselves have responsibility for deciding, without your involvement, whether they offer services to francophones, or does Industry Canada have some sort of protocol to make sure that all these agencies spend money for the francophone community in their respective regions?