Mr. Speaker, I will be very brief on this point and I will speak in my first language.
I want to speak of the law of Canada and particularly the Official Languages Act of Canada. Many members of the House will remember not many months ago when we stood in tribute to the memory of the late Right Hon. Pierre Trudeau. He was a man with whom I disagreed on many matters. He brought in a law that wrote into the law of the land the bilingual nature of this country and particularly of this institution.
There are many of us here in the House who fought to support that law and fought to support that principle. That is the principle that is at risk here today. If we, citing laws from a century ago, a time when Canada was a colony of Britain and not an independent country, start a precedent here of saying that the unilingualism that was part of Canada's past should prevail over the bilingualism that is part of Canada's law and present, then we are on a dangerous and slippery slope.
I frankly am shocked to hear these arguments coming from members of the party that was created and given such momentum by the late Mr. Trudeau, by members of the party of the late Mr. Pearson who fought so hard to assure a respect for the official languages of the country.
The Official Languages Act is clear. It says:
The purpose of this Act is to—ensure equality of status and equal rights and privileges as to their use in all federal institutions, in particular with respect to their use in parliamentary proceedings, in legislative and other instruments, in the administration of justice, in communicating with or providing services to the public and in carrying out the work of federal institutions—
This is the central and most important federal institution of the land. If we are not, on a particular item, going to respect the full import of the Official Languages Act in the proceedings of this parliament, then it is in danger everywhere.
This is raised by my colleague as a point of order. It could almost be a point of privilege because it goes to the roots of the purpose of the House and it goes to the roots of the bilingual nature of the country.
We have all engaged in debate in the House and sometimes said intemperate things. All of us do. I would hope that the government House leader and his colleagues will consider what he has just said. I would hope that they would consider the tone in which he spoke, perhaps not deliberately; that is not the issue. No one is accusing anyone of anything deliberate, although I have to say that if this is proceeded with, if there is an attempt to steamroll over this legitimate concern that has been raised by francophone and other members of the House, then it becomes a deliberate slight of the principles of the law concerning the Official Languages Act of Canada.
I call on my colleagues in the Liberal Party, a party I worked with in having the Official Languages Act adopted across Canada, to reconsider and to insist on the application in fact here of the fundamental principle of this act as concerns the rights of the francophone members of this House.
