Mr. Speaker, while the Prime Minister is strutting about telling everyone that Canada is the best country in the world, according to the United Nations, the quality of life of Franco-Ontarians is comparable to that of citizens in the Third World. This was the finding of a study made public yesterday by a group promoting the development of French in Ontario.
It also revealed that if the UN were to take the rate of functional illiteracy among Franco-Ontarians into consideration in calculating the human development index, Canada would be a long way from first place.
How can the Prime Minister crow about a superficial rating and close his eyes to the despicable treatment of the French speaking minority by English Canada? If Statistics Canada were to supply the UN with the real figures on illiteracy among francophones outside Quebec, the Prime Minister might be more circumspect.