Mr. Speaker, on his first point, with respect to the true costs, I would agree with him. If the present costs that are put forward by the government are not the complete costs then let us have the complete costs. I do not think it serves the debate well to have varying versions of the costs.
I do not know whether these costs are the full costs or not but we will have a chance in the committee to tie officials down on that. I think all the costs should be put on the table and then we can judge. I am sure, however, that in comparison to other programs they are still very small as a percentage base compared to health care, social services and so on.
His next point was with respect to what should be the exact definition of where the people demand the services. I was on the official languages committee in 1968-69 for the first act. We spent almost a year on it. I was on the committee in 1988 for the second version and we went through at great length the points that are being raised by the member: How narrow or how wide should the definition be in covering minority language communities? Should you cover Gravelbourg or not cover Gravelbourg? Should you just cover large areas like the east and north of Ontario and leave out, let us say, the Acadian community in Nova Scotia? We went through that for months and months in 1988.
The hon. member and myself are both on the official languages committee and we will have a chance to go through it again. That does not strike to the heart of the legislation, to the principles. Here we are debating how wide or how narrow, that concept of which populations should be served and where, how big that should be before we give the services. We will have a chance to go at that.
It comes also to a question of justice. Take the eastern townships as an example. There is a majority of francophones in the eastern townships now but the first Europeans to come to that part of Quebec were anglophones who fled from the United States to towns like Cowansville, Knowlton and Frelighsburg. I have lived there. I lived in Sherbrooke. They built a university there and they built colleges; Stanstead, Bishop's, Compton Hall and so on. Now it is mostly French speaking. Are we to leave these people out altogether with these long historic rights? That is a very important question.
We studied it before and we will study it again.