Mr. Speaker, on May 17, 2007, I referred to the minister responsible for official languages. The previous day, May 16, 2007, the National Assembly of Quebec passed another unanimous motion. All the parties of the National Assembly passed a unanimous motion demanding that decisive action be taken to defend and promote French.
An example of such action that had proven its worth was most assuredly the court challenges program, which was an essential tool. We all know what happened. The Conservatives eliminated it, without even discussing it with program officials.
The current federal government, that is, this alliance of Reformers and Conservatives, is being very hypocritical towards francophones in minority communities in Canada. The government is basically telling francophones that their rights matter, but they are losing their means of defending them.
I asked the minister for her reaction to the situation. Of course, since it was question period and not answer period, I was very disappointed by her answer.
For a right to have any significance, one has to be able to defend it. Eliminating the court challenges program goes against this principle. The court challenges program was created to avoid an unfair situation between parents and volunteers who want to tell the government—whether the federal, provincial, municipal government or any school board—that it is making a mistake, that it is doing something that violates the Canadian Constitution and interferes with the rights of the people who want to go to court. The government—the federal or provincial government—can show up with a team of lawyers, while the parents who want to have schools for their children or volunteers who want to ensure that their hospital does not close, do not have that kind of resources. The court challenges program was a very useful tool in that sense.
Thanks to two reviews of the program, one in 1997 and the other in 2003, it was shown that the court challenges program was more than adequate. In 1997, among other things, it was said that the court challenges program made it easier to settle a number of disputes and largely contributed to clarifying constitutional rights. Just think about the recognition of minority francophones to manage their own schools.
Tomorrow, in the Standing Committee on Official Languages, we will have the opportunity to speak to someone who worked very hard on this level. He will tell us, for example, that parents in Gravelbourg, Saskatchewan, had to mortgage their homes to get francophone teachers in their community.
Another aspect became clear in 2003. It was said that the clarification process was permanent and, by all accounts, it would go on indefinitely.
The court challenges program is essential because society evolves. Furthermore, it reaches out to linguistic minorities as well as disadvantaged citizens.
On that note, I will leave the floor to my colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for la Francophonie and Official Languages. I hope she will have better answers than her colleague, the minister.