Mr. Speaker, I will try to slow down, because the interpreters tell us that the faster we talk, the more difficult their work is.
My point is that the language issue has been brushed aside for too long. Up until very recently, we were told that everything was great and that Canada stood as a model in terms of treatment of linguistic minorities. Meanwhile, assimilation rates of francophone populations increased everywhere and the proportion of people who spoke French at home, for example, declined. Nevertheless, everyone kept saying that everything was fine, including in Quebec.
Now that an election is looming, suddenly there is a recognition that French is declining and we have emergency debates. That is great, I am very happy about it, but I think a fundamental change is in order. The Official Languages Act does not work.
The Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, the Laurendeau-Dunton commission, considered more territorial models, like in Switzerland and Belgium. They are the only models that work. Unless there is a common language in a given territory, the survival and vitality of that language cannot be ensured.
In Canada, outside Quebec, we see that English is clearly the common language. In spite of the immigration levels being quite high in Canada, about 99% of language transfers among newcomers favour English. Therefore, English is not threatened in Canada.
We have seen laws against the French language being adopted everywhere. At the time of the Dunton-Laurendeau commission and the Estates General of French Canada, things started moving in Quebec, and the independence movement was born. That was the time when people started waking up. I believe Mr. Pearson had good intentions, but when Mr. Trudeau came, he refused to allow anything to be called into question and did not want to grant any collective rights to Quebeckers or to francophones. He established a model of institutional bilingualism based on individual rights which would be exercised conditionally, in accordance with the famous “where numbers warrant” rule. That model does not work.
Wherever such a system of institutional bilingualism is used in the world, with the same rights applying everywhere, it invariably leads to the assimilation of minority languages. Conversely, systems of territorial bilingualism do work.
In Flemish Belgium, the public service operates in Dutch. That does not stop people from learning four or five second languages easily. Dutch, which is not widely spoken in the rest of the world, is not in danger in Flemish Belgium. The same is true in Wallonia, the francophone region. We need a system that looks like that.
A people's right to self-determination includes the right to secure the future of its national language and culture. That is not what the government opted for. “Where the number warrants” is ludicrous. It means that, if French is in decline somewhere, services in French are cut. That is a bit like having a law to promote employment and fight unemployment that cuts job-finding services wherever employment rates drop. It makes no sense. It is an absolutely ludicrous principle.
The other ludicrous principle was the official language minority rule, which separated French Quebec from francophones in the rest of Canada.
It just so happened that, in Quebec, anglophones were considered to be minority language speakers even though anglophones had school and university systems that received vastly more funding than francophone systems.
According to the rule, anglophones were a minority. Well, they would be if Quebec were independent.
Anyway, they received loads of funding. I just want to quote a study about university funding across Canada. Oddly enough, the study is virtually impossible to find. It was carried out by Frédéric Lacroix and Patrick Sabourin some time ago, in 2005.
They looked at the share of funding for universities based on language.
At that time in Quebec, the Government of Quebec and the federal government jointly provided 27.7% of funding. However, the Government of Quebec is exemplary in its treatment of its linguistic minority as primary and secondary schools as well as CEGEPs and English universities are overfunded. You will find English schools and services for anglophones almost everywhere in Quebec. Where there are very few anglophones, the means are found for English services. Universities have more equitable funding. In the case of Quebec, the funding is not equitable and English universities and education are overfunded.
Approximately 33% of New Brunswick's population was French. Funding for the Université de Moncton and for French-language university services was 26%. That was pretty good. In Ontario, funding was 3% for 5.9% of francophones. In Nova Scotia, it was 1.6% for 4% of francophones. In Alberta, it was 0.2% for 2.5% of francophones. The percentages keep dropping—