Mr. Speaker, because of a difference in the French and English versions of the federal income tax return, French-speaking Canadian taxpayers living temporarily outside Canada will pay more income tax than their English-speaking counterparts.
Line 419 of the French version refers to a 4.56 per cent surtax, while the surtax in the English version is only 3 per cent.
The Commissioner of Official Languages, Victor Goldbloom, was totally justified in saying in his 1994 report that the bilingualism policy was still poorly implemented more than a quarter century after its adoption.
How can the government justify such a lack of rigour where the equitable treatment of francophones in Canada is concerned?