Thank you for your question.
As I said at the end of my opening remarks, part I of the part IV regulations gives us some guidance on how to provide a definition without it actually being in the definitions section of the regulations.
When it comes to the term “strong institutions”, we would have to go back to the legislator's intent. What was understood, at least in my opinion, is that this kind of institution is managed by, for and with the communities.
In fact, the Official Languages Act goes on to refer to institutions that are supported by the communities and that promote them. As things stand, that makes it quite difficult to see how this could be made operational. I think that deserves a lot of thought, but the regulations that are currently proposed say absolutely nothing about what these strong institutions are and how the federal government should continue to support and promote them.
There's also a question that remains unanswered. In communities where such institutions don't exist in the key areas mentioned in the same part of the act, should the federal government help create such institutions? The Université de l'Ontario français, or UOF, is an example that comes to mind. That's a fairly recent example.
One question that occurred to me when I was reviewing the draft regulations was whether the regulations should also specify which institutions those are.