Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for St. Boniface. Unfortunately in the 10 minutes I will have and the 10 minutes he will have, we will not have enough time to respond to all of the arguments that have been put forward in this debate, especially some which I believe are false and misleading.
The hon. member from Nanaimo of the Reform Party proposes three things in his motion. First he proposes to amend the Official Languages Act to provide territorial language rights. Generally speaking it would mean there would only be one official language in Quebec, which would be French and one official language in the rest of Canada which would be English.
While he did not accept that extreme expression of the territorial principle, some members in his party in speaking to the debate have supported it. The Reform Party has not been completely together on this one. He said that bilingual services should apply in the east and north of Ontario, in the northeastern part of New Brunswick and west of Montreal. He gave those as examples. When I questioned him on it, he said he was not hard and fast on the examples but at least it gave us an idea of the territorial bilingualism he had in mind. As I pointed out in the question which I put to him, it would leave out the anglophones in the eastern townships, the anglophones in the Gaspé and the anglophones in the Outaouais region. It would leave out the francophones of Manitoba that have had historic rights in that province. It would leave out the francophones in Nova Scotia, the Acadians.
What we are talking about is how wide or how narrow is interpreted the expression "when numbers warrant". It would seem that the hon. member from the Reform Party would interpret it widely so it would be very difficult for many minority communities to qualify. He would interpret it in a way that would leave out, to a greater extent than we do, minority language communities.
We oppose the first proposition in his resolution because we believe that the one million francophones outside Quebec, as citizens of Canada, have rights and those rights should be protected. The approximately 800,000 anglophones in Quebec have the same rights, to be protected under the federal Official Languages Act and policy.
The second point in his resolution is to provide for English and French in the Parliament of Canada and the institutions relating to the Parliament of Canada and to the Federal Court. That is the law and the policy right now. I do not know how that part of his resolution would change anything. I may be incorrect. He did not spend much time speaking to that part of his resolution.
The third part of his resolution asks that we refrain from spending on those aspects of language which come under provincial jurisdiction. He did not speak to that part of his resolution either but if we were to adopt that policy, it would mean cutting assistance to the provinces for minority language education and second language education, including immersion. That would be a bad thing.
The money the federal government provides to the provinces for second language education, including immersion, and for minority language education is a good thing. It is done for the national unity of the country because many of the provinces could not afford to give adequate minority language education.
The hon. member from Nanaimo asked that we keep an open mind. I came to this debate with an open mind but I must say in listening to the speeches, as a party the policy has been unclear and ambiguous. I am not saying all of them. I listened to them all. I was here for the entire debate. They gave different versions. In fact some of them proposed things that were contrary to the resolution. Some of the proposals they spoke of were truly retrograde, a step backward in protecting the language rights of Canadians, including minority language rights.
He said in his opening remarks that the act was not working well, therefore it had to be changed. He said in many cases it was divisive and too expensive. He suggested that commissioners of official languages had supported that criticism.
That is not correct. It is true that from time to time, and the reports of the official languages commissioner will attest to that, they are critical of the administration for not following the provisions of the act or where there have been mistakes or errors. That is the role of the Commissioner of Official Lan-
guages, to point out where the administration has failed to live up to the principles in the act.
No commissioner that I know of has criticized the principles and the general policy of the act. As a matter of fact, all commissioners agree that without the act things would be much worse with respect to our language minorities.
As to whether it is working well or not working well, these are relative concepts. In fact, there are now 162,000 francophones outside Quebec in 700 French primary schools. There are 23,000 francophones outside Quebec in 45 colleges and universities. Four million Canadians, or 16 per cent of the population, speak both official languages.
The second criticism he made is that it is too expensive. Again, I do not know of any Commissioner of Official Languages who criticized the entire policy as being too expensive. The present commissioner criticized the bonus program and suggested we get rid of it but he has not said that the policy is too expensive in a global sense.
Commissioners have criticized specifics within the policy and asked that they be corrected, but not that the entire policy be cancelled or cut back.
With respect to expense, in fact it only costs 20 cents out of every $100 that the federal government spends on programs. That comes to three cents per day per Canadian. In response to the member of the Reform Party, it will not keep many hospitals open that are closing in his constituency. The cost for official language policy is a very small percentage of our entire budget.
Finally, he says it is divisive. Again I do not know of any Commissioner of Official Languages who says that the principles of the act are divisive. It is divisive in the sense that some people will not accept the principles in the Official Languages Act. It is their democratic right to oppose it and we hear that today. I do not think the reason, the cause of the divisiveness, is the principles in the act. It is just that some people will not recognize the rights of linguistic minorities.
The polls that I have looked at-I do not want to spend too much time, but they are on the record-indicate that from 60 to 75 per cent of Canadians support the policies in the Official Languages Act.
The purpose of the Official Languages Act is to provide legally enforceable language rights and language justice for the two official language communities in Canada, that is the one million francophones outside of Quebec and the approximately 800,000 anglophones in Quebec. It is also to serve the interests of the six million francophones in Canada, including those in Quebec because they are a minority in the entire country.
It is a law that is based principally or inspired by a need for tolerance, understanding and generosity. I am pleased that our government is going to bring back the court challenges program because it is no use having rights in law if you cannot enforce them in the courts.
There is no obligation to become bilingual under the Official Languages Act but I heard members of the Reform Party once again saying today that French is being thrust down their throats. No language is being thrust down the throat of the consumer of services. It is true that if you are going to provide those services some people have to speak French and some people have to speak English in order to provide the services but generally speaking that is in the institution.
By the way, 70 per cent of all federal government positions are unilingual either English or French. Only 30 per cent of the positions are bilingual.
I thought I had until 5.15. I wrote down the time. How much time do I have left?