Mr. Speaker, fifty years ago I had the pleasure of travelling through the western provinces with my father, who had a folk group known as Omer Dumas and his minstrel singers.
I visited villages with names like Saint-Jean-Baptiste, Saint-Pierre-Joli, Otterburne and Saint-Claude. There was Prud'homme, Plamondon and Bonnyville, the home of the Campagne family that has formed the group known as Hart Rouge. There was Beaumont, in Alberta. There was also St. Boniface, which unfortunately no longer exists. St-Boniface, which was the centre of life in Manitoba, has been merged with Winnipeg.
In those days, we had the pleasure of meeting the parish priests, since the shows my father put on always took place in parish halls and often in churches. He did not just tour in the west; he took his show all through Quebec and New Brunswick too.
Parents we met said great efforts were made to preserve the French language in the west, but the big problem was that more and more the children would use English in speaking to each other.
My question to the member for St. Boniface, whose French is excellent by the way, is the following: What language do 20-year olds, the children of francophone parents, use?