Mr. Speaker, I am deeply committed to the cause of advocating for the deaf and hard of hearing, who account for more than 10% of the population.
The CRIM, a computer science research centre in Montreal, has made a significant breakthrough; it has developed a captioning system using voice recognition technology.
Despite such advances, much remains to be done, particularly with respect to French captioning, which is miserably lagging behind.
It is not right that, in 2005, francophones who are deaf or hard of hearing do not have access to programming in their own language. It is the federal government's responsibility to take action by requiring all broadcasters to fully caption their television programs.
Since the heritage minister and her government have failed to act, I will be introducing a bill today to amend the Broadcasting Act to make captioning mandatory.
As this is speech and hearing awareness month, I urge every parliamentarian to take concrete action to ensure that silence is no longer a barrier to the development of people who are deaf or hard of hearing.