Mr. Speaker, yesterday, when we were voting on the bill to appoint bilingual judges to the Supreme Court, a measure that has received the support of the Commissioner of Official Languages and Quebec's National Assembly, we were dismayed and offended to see francophone Conservatives from the greater Quebec City area oppose it.
How shameful it was to see those members congratulate themselves on voting against a measure, to see how proud they were to be undermining the right of francophones to be heard in their own language. What does it mean for linguistic equality when francophones are forced to use simultaneous translation in the highest court in Canada to plead their case, when one single judge's unilingualism forces all of the judges to deliberate in English?
Are those francophone Conservative members from the greater Quebec City area so ashamed of their language that they are all too eager to kowtow to party ideology even though it clashes with the linguistic realities of Quebeckers, Canadian francophones and Acadians?
We believe that nothing could possibly justify their opposition.