Mr. Speaker, it is May 1, International Workers' Day, and I would like to point out that there are two categories of workers in Quebec.
Workers in the first category work in French in an environment that respects Bill 101. Workers in the second category are subject to the Canada Labour Code and their employers do not respect the Charter of the French Language. They work in ports, airports, telecommunications companies, interprovincial transportation, railway transportation, banks, etc. There are more than 200,000 of these workers in Quebec.
All too often, they must work in both official languages, or even solely in English. They receive documents in English and get called into meetings held in English when at least one of their colleagues is a unilingual anglophone.
Yet Quebec is a nation. Parliament recognized this. The member for Drummond introduced Bill C-482 to amend the Canada Labour Code to apply the Charter of the French Language to businesses under federal jurisdiction, so that the workers of Quebec can work in French.