Madam Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to point out the enormous progress we have made since Parliament enacted the Official Languages Act in 1969.
The vast majority of official language minority communities have access to federal services in the official language of their choice. Forty years ago, those communities had to communicate with federal institutions in the majority language. In 40 years, we have gone from a virtually unilingual public service to a bilingual public service.
Our road map for Canada's linguistic duality, which we adopted in 2008, supports English and French minority language communities and ensures Canadians can obtain government services in both official languages. We can be proud of how far we have come and, as we move forward, we do so knowing there is an excellent foundation to build on.