Mr. Speaker, according to Statistics Canada, of the 1,000,000 francophones outside Quebec who declared French as their mother tongue, only 640,000 still speak French at home. Despite this very alarming situation, the commissioner of official languages has just released an annual report claiming, on the contrary, that considerable progress has been made in the use of French outside Quebec.
My question is for the Deputy Prime Minister. How can the commissioner of official languages table such a rosy report, when for 18 months he has been releasing reports that totally contradict what he said today? What extraordinary event has happened since then to cause such an about-face on the part of the commissioner?