Mr. Speaker, with the 10th anniversary of the death of Camille Laurin just two days away, the building that houses the Office québécois de la langue française will be renamed in his honour.
Elected as a Parti Québécois member of the National Assembly for the first time in 1970, Mr. Laurin held a number of portfolios in the Lévesque governments of the 1970s and 1980s. Appointed minister of state for social development in 1976, Mr. Laurin introduced Bill 101, Quebec's Charter of the French Language, which made French the only official language of the Government of Quebec. It also guarantees Quebeckers the right to work and study in French.
A psychiatrist by training, he was a pioneer of the sovereignty movement in Quebec and saw Quebec's independence as a necessary collective affirmation.
On the eve of the 10th anniversary of Mr. Laurin's death, the Bloc Québécois would like to acknowledge the importance of his contribution to ensuring the pre-eminence, the very survival, of the French language in Quebec.