Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak on this issue. Since the Reform Party policies on bilingualism have been misinterpreted, misrepresented and misunderstood, it gives me an opportunity to put them back in their proper perspective.
I will comment on the speech given by the Bloc member for Québec-Est. It is regrettable that it was one of the most insightful, racist speeches I have ever hear. He tried to encourage other people across the country to show their anger and frustration. He used the word hate and said anglophones hate Quebecers or that anglophones hate francophones. I do not know under what authority, according to what knowledge, he can make that statement.
I know the majority of Quebecers do not share his view with respect to hatred, even if some are separatists. I know the majority of Quebecers in two referendums voted to stay in the country. It is a shame and a sham that the Bloc continues to want to push its personal separatist cause to break up the country.
He also discredited himself in three ways. He failed to give proof of his motion, which states in part that the government fails to recognize the urgency. It does. It has a lot of audits. It has made mistakes with the Official Languages Act and it is not perfect. However, the member never proved the urgency he talked about.
His motion also says they should take exceptional measures to counter their assimilation and allow for growth. There has been a lot of movement toward respecting francophones who live outside Quebec and working with them. I have evidence in my speech which shows that.
The member also described himself by only complaining. That is all he did, complain, complain, complain. He offered no solutions to solve the problem. This gentleman does not wish to stay in Canada. This gentleman has no interest in promoting anglophone-francophone relationships and bilingualism across the country.
There is proof of that. The final discredit was when he was on television with my colleague from Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca, my colleague asked him what would happen if Quebec separated to all those francophones who live outside Quebec. He shrugged his shoulders and said: "Who cares?" That is shameful. What duplicity. It reminds me of the finance minister and the Prime Minister. They are duplicitous too.
His speech strictly tried to create a myth to push the Bloc agenda. The agenda should be what can the Bloc members of Quebec do to make things better for Quebec. What can the Bloc
members do to make this a better country to live in? Together we can grow and nurture much better than if we divide and separate. The consequences are as severe for the rest of Canada as they are for Quebecers in Canada. They know it.
They hid the Le Hir reports; 10 or 15 reports were hidden. Parizeau showed he cared only about a small select group, a few people. He made bigoted and racist comments when he lost the referendum, and now Bouchard will have another referendum. When will it end?
He talks about democracy. They had two democratic elections. Twice they lost. They want to do it a third time? What happens if they get yes with 50 per cent plus one? That means immediate break up, right? They will not have another referendum then, will they? Bloc members are shaking their heads, "no, we won't". No is never, but yes is forever, and yes just once.
That is hypocritical. It is undemocratic. Quebecers should wake up and realize these separatists are hurting them. There are francophones and anglophones in Quebec who do not like what they are doing. The majority do not like what they are doing. They should stand up to them. That is the only way we will put this to rest.
I have complained that he has not shown the urgency. All he has done is make accusations. If he could have focused on how to better spend the billion dollars a year we spend on bilingualism to encourage bilingualism, even in Quebec, it would have been a much more productive speech.
This motion would be much more productive if we talked about how we could promote bilingualism. That is the problem. It has 63 per cent to 65 per cent of Canadians complaining about how official bilingualism is not working in this country. Even Quebecers are in the 60 percentile that complain about how this is not working. If that is where the gentleman from Québec-Est is coming from, to that degree I agree with him. I agree official bilingualism is not working. The way to do it is to stop having it misinterpreted.
The question is how to promote bilingualism. His lack of attention to the word bilingualism to his own province is what is lacking in his speech. What about the ethnics who come into that province? Yes, they have to learn French first. Yes, they should learn French first. Yes, they must be made to learn French. That is a provincial jurisdiction and a provincial right.
What about those anglophones born in Quebec who remain anglophones, 800,000 of them? Do they not have any rights? Will they all be kicked out?
Let us look at the facts. The government spends over a billion dollars a year and has done so for about 30 years, since Trudeau started this; $30 billion or more spent on bilingualism. Do we have value for our money? No. Sixty-three per cent of Canadians, including Quebecers, say no.
The official languages commissioner sends confusing messages. The person who is supposed to ensure this is being enforced right does not know what he is talking about. Let me give an example of that.
In 1994, I was on the Standing Committee on Official Languages where I met Mr. Goldbloom. The first thing he said was Reform's policy is not very good for Quebecers. He said if we went to Montreal we would certainly hear that the English speaking community, which is vibrant and has moved a great deal in the direction of bilingualism, is still very much committed to its life in English. This is for the Bloc members. Those people in Montreal still want the right to have English.
I was able to point out our policies. I indicated our party's position is that we are not anti-French, as some of the media likes to accuse us. The principle of supplying bilingual services in federal institutions should be where numbers warrant, where there is significant demand. This is the one supported by the Reform Party.
The question became, both for myself and the commissioner, how to define the minority community, the size, how big it should be to qualify for bilingual services?
Mr. Goldbloom said: "A province, I respectfully submit, is too large. The unity of this country matters to me. Unity means we are talking about a unit. That unit is not a province, it is the country. In the country there are 7 million people who speak French. It is not the small number of people that is the issue. It is the whole country and it is the history of linguistic duality".
There are two messages there, how to incorporate and include services in two languages to satisfy the 7 million French speaking people and that there should be services required to serve the balance of Canadians who, I presume, would be English speaking.
He says the unit of a province is too large but that the country is the right size. That is a confusing message. I think everybody is going away from what the original B and B commission indicated.
The B and B report, which Trudeau commissioned and which he based on his bilingualism and biculturalism policy, was to have a system for all individuals located in the country to have the right to communicate and receive services from government in their preferred official language.
This has been interpreted as where sufficient numbers and significant demand warrant. This has been reinterpreted by the Official Languages Act that we must force all Canadians to learn two languages. We object to having an Official Languages Act that enforces bilingualism. People react to this, especially when one province will not teach in the second official language. This offends and upsets people. It is what is making this issue so controversial.
We should go back to the original B and B report and significant numbers, sufficient demand. We could end the official enforcement of two official languages and that money, whether it is a $500 million or $1 billion, would be better spent encouraging and promoting bilingualism. To speak a second language is an advantage, not a disadvantage.
We do know Canada's history, unlike what the member for Québec-Est said. We all recognize that this is a country of two primary languages, French and English. To promote and encourage Canadians to learn a second language is positive, not negative. It is similar to Europe.
I speak Hungarian. I am a first generation immigrant. There is no official Hungarian language policy in Canada. I go into my little pockets and pools where I can speak Hungarian to Hungarians. I never spoke one word of Hungarian for 10 years.
I have learned to speak quite well in Hungarian. I have forgotten some but not all of it. I am saying to Quebecers and separatists that their argument that if they do not speak French every day all day they will forget their language and if they do not force people in Quebec to learn only French they will lose they language, is not right. I am living proof it is not right. I guarantee that if every francophone in Quebec never spoke a word of French for 10 years, they would still remember how to speak French. I submit that very humbly. They may forget a little bit. The argument that if they do not speak French all the time and do not have it up there first and foremost they will lose their language is wrong.
How did we get here? We got here through the B and B report and through a confusion and misinterpretation of Trudeau's intention for a just society. It is unfortunate that has happened because although I do not respect the games the separatists are playing, I respect their right to fight for what they want and what they believe in.
By the same token, I would hope that they would give me that same respect and I could speak against them in such a way that shows them I really want to be their friend. I really want them to fight for Quebec the way Reformers are fighting for B.C., Ontario and Alberta. They should force the federal government. Le problème c'est Ottawa, as our leader said. That is the problem and that is where we should focus.
We can fix the Official Languages Act. We can move to encouraging and promoting bilingualism. There is nothing wrong with learning English or French no matter what one's first language is, even if it is Hungarian. This is the way to solve the problem.
I have to go back to a couple of other facts mentioned by the member for Quebec Est to give credence to his contention that there is an urgency and a lack of respect for francophones. That is simply untrue, totally and blatantly untrue. I respect francophones. I stand here and defy anyone to say that I do not respect francophones. I respect all Canadians.
For instance, the member said that there were only one or two French schools in my province. Let me tell the hon. member what the deal is. In Alberta 163 schools offered French immersion in 1994-95. That represents 27,717 students. The member asked: "So what if there is French immersion? What does that do for the francophones who live there?" What it does is when those people whose first language is English learn French and become bilingual, then the francophone has just found 27,717 new friends. That is what it does. That is what builds a country. That is what will unite us. It is what brings us together.
On top of those 163 schools, 21 schools offer francophone programs for francophones living in Alberta. Programs just for francophones last year represented services for 2,765 francophone students. They can even have their own French boards if they want.
I would like to share with the hon. member for Québec-Est that for the first time there is a French only school in Calgary Centre. That is in Alberta, where 23 Reformers have come from to this House of Commons and are labelled as anti-French, a province which has done nothing but promote bilingualism.
Those are examples of promoting and encouraging bilingualism. People I know, lawyers, doctors and accountants send their kids willingly to French immersion schools because they know the advantage of it. The member should be doing the same thing for francophones. He should be encouraging francophones to learn English as well, instead of being so paranoid about his own language which he will never ever forget how to speak and I know that.
The Reform Party has done a poor job of representing its bilingualism policy. We come across as anti-French. We come across as anti-Quebec. What I am hoping to do today is to put on the record quite clearly and unequivocally that we are pro Quebec, we are pro French, we are pro bilingualism. In fact we are pro Canada.
We want this country to stay together. We want this country to show its ethnic backgrounds and diversity. Yes we agree that the
way the government is doing it is not the right way. Yes we agree it is easy for the member for Québec-Est to stand up and get the government ticked off and get more separatist support, but that is not the way to reach his ultimate objectives.
Look what is happening in the city of Montreal. After two referendums and 25 years of trying to separate, it is has not worked. Why not just forget it? Montreal has dwindled to half of what it was 25 years ago.
In 1969 I went to the University of Ottawa and bilingualism was prevalent then. Sometime in the late sixties the separatist movement started. A student union started it. I was there and saw the birth of separatism, of that movement and that thought.
The difference in Ottawa was maybe 25 per cent or 30 per cent of people were bilingual. Now I do not need a statistic. I do not need a map. I do not need anything. I am here 25 years later and I get the impression that 75 per cent of people in Ottawa are bilingual. Everywhere I go they can speak two languages. Whether they greet you in English or French, you go into the other language and you just do not know. You are not safe to say anything in another language assuming that the other person does not understand because they do.
This is evidence that bilingualism has worked. Ottawa is an example of it. In the House of Commons there are 1,400 employees under the control and purview of the board which the Speaker looks after. For 69 per cent of those employees, French is their first language. That is great and good. It shows that it works. It shows that things are being done positively within the system.
I want to explain what the Reform Party means when we say that we would replace the Official Languages Act. We do not like the Official Languages Act and we say a lot of the money being spent is a waste. Let us spend it better. We would replace the Official Languages Act with a territorial bilingualism act. It has its credibility and concept from the original Laurendeau-Dunton report, the B and B report. It goes back to that principle to recognize language minority rights. It is a compromise between the two extremes.
Under this model, language rights and minority language services would be extended only to those minorities large enough to survive over the long term. Smaller minorities would not receive full rights on the basis that the burden imposed on the majority population which must foot the tax bill for minority language government services outweighs the benefits being received by the minority. This model has been successfully employed in Finland for dealing with its Swedish speaking minority.
If practised in Canada, this model would extend full minority language rights to the large francophone communities in eastern and northeastern Ontario and to the Acadians of New Brunswick as well as to the anglophone community of west end Montreal. The rest of the country for all intents and purposes would not be required to offer the services in two languages. By doing this we then spend some advertising dollars on promoting and encouraging the learning of a second language.
When I went to high school in Arnprior, Ontario I was taught a second language. It was French. I learned English at home and French in school but I did not see the need for it. Times have changed. This is the nineties. There is a need for a second language. There is a need for people to expand their minds. People do not have to learn a second language and if they speak just one language they should not be ashamed or embarrassed.
There are places in Quebec where they are forced to do things in English where there is no need. Some areas are so francophone it is ridiculous to impose English signs and English services. They do not need it, they do not want it and they should not have to do it. The same exists outside of Quebec in a lot of areas.
If we want to achieve a balance, territorial bilingualism might go a long way toward solving that problem. I am not saying it would solve all of the problems because someone or something always gets in the way. They are politicians, bureaucrats and government.
We as politicians should clearly enunciate the objectives of what we want and then follow it up. The mistake Trudeau made is he enunciated a good objective and he supported the Laurendeau-Dunton report. That is all he wanted. He wanted to encourage, promote and set in place some services that would make francophones who left Quebec feel comfortable living outside of Quebec. That is what he wanted. However other people came along, for example the bureaucrats, and interpreted it differently and started imposing rules. For example, I think it is silly to have language police in a province. That is such a waste of money, but it is just my personal opinion.
What else can I say in the minute that is left for me.
