Mr. Speaker, I am always interested to hear members of the Bloc Quebecois talk about their culture and about other French Canadians, especially Franco-Ontarians, and how they are going to be assimilated, saying that the federal government has no role to play.
I must tell you that I am a French Canadian, born in northern Ontario in a family which has been living there for generations. I was raised and educated in French.
Let me tell you that my roots are the same as theirs, even though for economic reasons, my ancestors chose to go and build a country, Canada. Some stopped in Ontario, others continued further west. We now have our schools, several of them in fact. There are programs to teach English to francophones and French to anglophones.
It is certainly not perfect, but it is a lot better than it was 30 years ago. Do you think for one moment that without a federal government we, francophones from outside Quebec, would have had anything from people like the members opposite who choose to deny our very existence, and claim they are the only francophones in Canada? May I ask them what role they intend to play in the life of my children or my grand-children with their activities? To resort to such trickery is a disgrace.