Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to respond to the question of the member for Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe regarding the court challenges program and the government's commitment to official language minority rights.
As we know, the court challenges program is in front of the courts right now. It would not be appropriate to comment on the court challenges program. The member's question pertaining to litigation costs will also be determined by the court. I think it is best to let the courts do their job, hear the case from both sides, provide a ruling and also rule on who should be responsible for which costs.
Regarding the government's commitment to official language minority rights, however, I would like to elaborate.
Our government has clearly and repeatedly shown its commitment to fostering the development of official language communities throughout Canada. Our government's objective is to tangibly and positively improve the lives of Canadians. This approach also applies to language rights.
A number of our government's initiatives enable official language minority communities to exercise their rights in their day-to-day lives. Examples of this are programs that ensure access to health care in French, as well as the great progress made in terms of education, from the elementary level to the post-secondary level, to allow members of our communities to study in their first language.
I would like to remind members that in our last budget, in 2007, our government invested an additional $30 million over two years to support francophone and anglophone minority communities across Canada and to promote linguistic duality. These additional resources are supporting very concrete projects that target areas such as youth, media, culture and education.
As well, in the Speech from the Throne that we delivered in October, we announced that we would propose a strategy to implement the next phase of the action plan on official languages.
Our government is committed to our official language minority communities.