We have a monitoring function, not just for private members' bills but for legislation generally. If we see legislation coming that we think is going to have an impact on official languages, on minority language communities, it's specifically part of the mandate—it's our job—to stick our hand up and say, “Here's something you haven't taken into account.”
I've appeared before committees to talk about the acts concerning Air Canada and about the changes to the Criminal Code in terms of the operation of bilingual trials. There are others, where we haven't been formally called upon but where our parliamentary relations people will say, “Here is a piece of legislation that's been tabled; we think we should take a closer look at this.” We're certainly free to intervene and to say, “We have some concerns; here's something you haven't taken into consideration.”
Sometimes what we've done is commission studies by academics. For example, when the government announced that it was transferring responsibility for coordination of official languages inside government from the Privy Council Office to Canadian Heritage, my first reaction was to raise a concern about it in last year's annual report. Then we commissioned Donald Savoie to take a look at the implications of horizontality in making that kind of move. That report is informing one of the chapters in our annual report.