Mr. Speaker, this very day the newspaper representing francophones outside Quebec has asked Quebecers to vote no in the referendum, because the future of francophones outside Quebec depends on the federal Official Languages Act, and on the fact that there is a government here in Canada, in Ottawa, which has always defended francophones outside Quebec.
Certainly some people have more difficulty than others in retaining their French, but they do want to retain it. Not only that. Every year 350,000 English speaking Canadians learn French because they live in Canada, a country where there are francophones, and this raises the number of people speaking French in Canada and in the world. The reason French is alive and well in
America is that the French have remained in Canada since Confederation.