Official Languages committee  Yes, I was not there and I cannot tell you about that. I was not invited to that closed-door meeting. There were people from the FCFA, but I was not there personally. However, that did not prevent me from making comments. That consultation did take place. We had come up with our own Roadmap, so to speak, which was the Community Strategic Plan, as part of the Sommet des communautés francophones et acadiennes.

Official Languages committee  I would say that the approach is not consistent. Some departments and crown corporations consult us, whereas others do not. Some do so at our request, when we take the initiative.

Official Languages committee  I apologize. I am probably speaking too quickly for the interpreter. In fact, I was told about that at the beginning. In the future, I hope there will be more opportunities for dialogue between the institutions contained in the Roadmap, the other departments and the communities.

Official Languages committee  Mr. Chair, ladies and gentlemen, members of the committee, I would first like to thank you for having invited us to appear this morning as part of your study on the Roadmap for Canada's Linguistic Duality. We are coming to the roadmap's halfway point and we absolutely need to take this time to look back on what has been done and especially the approach that was taken, in order to make the adjustments needed between now and 2013.

Official Languages committee  Thank you very much.

Official Languages committee  Precisely. You have to take into account more than a mere static statistic and consider the reality. That's greatly evolved as well over the past 40 years. So that reality also has to be taken into account.

Official Languages committee  Governance, regulations and consultation. Enhanced powers for the commissioner are important, but if we begin by resolving all that, there will probably be less of a need for enhanced powers because we'll be complying with the act.

Official Languages committee  Regulations.

Official Languages committee  Yes.

Official Languages committee  There's the 5% and the supervision question. There is all the regulation that decides who will have services, when, where and how. This part is very complex and very much separate, whereas the act is intended as a whole and the parts of the act are highly interdependent. Let's look at them as interdependent parts and create regulations that are universal rather than separate regulations.

Official Languages committee  I lived in New Brunswick for several years, so I'm quite familiar with New Brunswick. My father is from New Brunswick. He's a francophone Acadian from New Brunswick. There have been several improvements, I will say. Just the recognition of New Brunswick as a bilingual province is great.

Official Languages committee  We weren't born yet.

Official Languages committee  Pardon me, that was too tempting.

Official Languages committee  There are problems, and I agree on that. However, there are ways to solve those problems. I go back to the example of Regina. I'm from that city and that's where I worked for a federal Crown corporation. Obviously, if you look for a bilingual chartered accountant in Regina only, you have access to a fairly limited pool.

Official Languages committee  We're on the verge of charging referral fees.