Madam Speaker, speaking from the perspective of an Alberta MP, there is great demand for people to be able to learn French. I see that in my community, and much of that is a question of what is within our education system. In my riding, we have a number of francophone schools for the francophone community. We have a very large and very successful French immersion program as well for people of all backgrounds, whether recent immigrants or people whose families have been in Canada for generations, who see the benefit and opportunities that are associated with being able to learn and study in French.
There is so much opportunity for French immersion, but I think one of the challenges is that sometimes there is less opportunity to actually use that French as people get older. People who have studied in French as students end up using the language less. I am not going to say anything that will surprise anyone, but generally the language of commerce and conversation where I live is English.
I think we need to think strategically about making those opportunities available to young people to study and having the federal government work collaboratively with provinces in terms of their areas of jurisdiction, and then also thinking about how we can create more opportunities for people to use French more as they get older.