Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon, colleagues.
Good afternoon, Ms. Boyer, Ms. Boily and Mr. Léger. It's always a pleasure to see you. We have a lot of hope in your responsiveness to enhancing the regulations.
Ms. Boyer, in your opening remarks, you spoke about the official languages administrative monetary penalties regulations, where we followed the process, and you will look at our recommendations. I heard your commitments when you came here to testify and I hope they're going to reflect that.
However, you forgot to talk about part VII of the Official Languages Act, which is covered by another regulation, and we are following the process. We studied that in committee, and in my opinion, there's still a great deal of work to be done on that section.
Let me start by talking about the objective of the Use of French in Federally Regulated Private Businesses Act, or UFPBA. During the modernization of the Official Languages Act, and specifically parts I and II, which are connected to the UFPBA, my understanding was that employees of federally regulated private businesses in Quebec, which is the only province where the common language is French, would be required to work in French.
However, that is not what the draft regulations on the use of French in federally regulated private businesses say. The draft regulations state that the UFPBA affirms that consumers have the right to communicate in French and employees of a federally regulated private business have the right to work in French. The UFPBA did not necessarily reflect those lines when we studied it. Can you expand on the rationale for that?