Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House to ask a question of my colleague who, I might add, does outstanding work on the Standing Committee on Official Languages. Not only does he do outstanding work there, but he is also the chair of the Quebec caucus of the official opposition. I know him very well, and I know that the issue of official languages is an everyday concern to him. I am convinced that our chair sees it as his duty to share anything and everything he hears at caucus with the Standing Committee on Official Languages. I would actually like to talk to him about the process to appoint the next official languages commissioner. I think he has had a chance to address it briefly. I say “briefly” even though he talked about it at length, because the saga dragged on in the House for quite some time.
According to him, does all the procrastination in the process of appointing an official languages commissioner not send the wrong message to minority anglophones in Quebec and minority francophones in most other Canadian provinces? Making partisan, political appointments to such an important position in a country like ours may very well lead to a major crisis of confidence on the part of Canadians in minority situations over the entire process that is currently in place to protect Canada's two official languages.