Mr. Speaker, on February 29, I asked the member for Louis-Saint-Laurent why the Conservatives had abandoned the Acadian and French-Canadian communities and why this government is acting more and more like Preston Manning’s Reform Party than like Joe Clark’s Conservatives, the farther we get into its mandate. In this case, the question is rhetorical. The Conservatives in the party of the member for Calgary Southwest have no belief in the vitality of the French fact in Canada.
Let us imagine for a moment that this government had not put any figure under the National Defence heading in the March budget. Unimaginable, you say? Of course! But for the action plan for official languages, on page 256 of the budget: nyet, nothing. It says: “to be determined”. That was on February 26, and here we are on April 10, 44 days later, and still there is nothing.
When it comes to making a mockery, the Conservative federal government, speaking from its incompetence, said it was waiting for the results from a consultant so that—obviously—it could drag it out and leave French-speaking minority groups in Canada twisting in the wind. We are talking about the Bernard Lord report. The document was released on March 20, and the Minister of Canadian Heritage, who is responsible for the second action plan for official languages, has said not a word.
The consultations held by the neo-Reform's mercenary brought forth a document that would embarrass a grade nine student. The Standing Committee on Official Languages had already submitted three excellent reports, in May 2007, December 2007 and March 2008, for the information of anyone who was even slightly interested in the Acadian and Canadian French-speaking minority, and so the person responsible for Canadian Heritage and Official Languages had more than was needed to prepare a new five-year plan.
We are talking about valuable reports: the first one on official language minority communities, produced after consultations held across Canada in all of the communities in the fall of 2006, a document 184 pages long; the second, on the Court Challenges Program, so shamefully eliminated by the neo-Reformers, at 44 pages; and the third, a report dealing with the federal public service and the language industry, in relation specifically to renewal of the action plan for official languages, at 49 pages. We have 277 pages of valuable ideas, produced over a 17-month period by some 20 members of Parliament, all united behind 58 recommendations, not to mention the 168 individuals and 108 organizations that appeared and the 56 briefs received. Stack them up beside the Lord report, with its 45 pages and 14 recommendations, and there is no comparison.
The public relations exercise by the neo-Reformers’ little buddy was a shameful waste of public money that talks about things we already knew and is full, absolutely full, of holes. It must be recalled that in June 2007, at the Sommet de la francophonie in Ottawa, the announcement by the member for Louis-Saint-Laurent of what was to become the closed-door and pointless exercise by Bernard Lord was already being denounced by leaders of the francophone minority community in Canada.
The idea that the Conservatives, alias the neo-Reformers, could form a majority government puts me in mortal fear for the Acadian and franco—
