Mr. Speaker, I wish to address a couple of points made by the hon. member. One part of the problem is the costs of official languages. The problem is that we do not know what those costs are.
Now we are told $601 million per year. We are told three cents on every $100. Frankly, I have received correspondence from the Department of National Defence specifically telling me: "Here is our figure of cost of this thing but we cannot tell all because of Treasury Board rules and regulations".
It is our perception that much of the cost of official languages is hidden somewhere or other. We would really like to unearth it. Perhaps that is the procedure that we can follow in the standing joint committee.
The other point that I would like to address which was made by the hon. member concerns the overall. What is it that we are trying to do here in examining the Official Languages Act? He was taking territorialism as an example and using the example that I was giving and saying that it did not go far enough. I agree. Let us take St. Boniface, Gravelbourg and Maillardville outside of New Westminster as places where it does merit it. Surely what we should be doing is studying the thing and not just rejecting it out of hand and saying the act is good, most people agree with it, therefore let us not look at it.
Please, let us go at it step by step and examine things that come up with a policy that works for all of us.