Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, members of the committee. As the director of the Language Rights Support Program, the LRSP, it is with pleasure that I give you an overview of the Language Rights Support Program. I will be followed by Guylaine Loranger,

Justice committee  I'm going to ask Guylaine Loranger to answer that question.

Justice committee  No, I'm good, unless you don't want me to be first.

Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am pleased to speak to you this morning about the language rights support program, the LRSP. As you know, the LRSP is the result of an out-of-court settlement after the abolition of the Programme de contestation judiciaire. The contribution agreement un

Justice committee  Actually, the funding allotted to information and promotion has stayed basically the same; it's just our activities that have changed. At the beginning, people didn't know us, and we wanted to make sure that we knew them, so we consulted people. We went all across Canada and did

Justice committee  I'm not sure what the decision will be. The contribution agreement that we have presently ends at March 31, 2017. Since the challenges program has been abolished, the language rights support program was created, but only for language rights. It didn't have any quality component l

Justice committee  Maybe Professor Pierre Foucher wants to answer that.

Justice committee  That's totally correct. Most of the funding that we refuse is because they do not meet the criteria. The first few years that we were open, all the ones that we refused were because they did not meet the criteria. It's only in the last three years that we've not only refused th

Justice committee  Absolutely. I am an Acadian. I was born in New Brunswick and lived in Nova Scotia for five years. I have even lived in Alberta, British Columbia, and Manitoba. Now I live in Ontario. I have myself experienced the differences between the communities. Not only are there difference

Justice committee  Yes. I should have brought my list. I have to be careful of the cases I name because the way we work at the Language Rights Support Program is that if an application comes to us, it's confidential, so who made the application and the fact that they made application is confidentia

Justice committee  I can say that there are about 20 to 30 cases that have finished since we've started. They went to different levels of court, but a lot of the cases that we do fund end up in the Supreme Court of Canada.

Justice committee  Yes, as per normal, the program was evaluated after five years by Canadian Heritage. They did an extensive review of the five years of the language rights support program. I've seen a copy of that report, but it's not yet been made official and public. It hasn't been published ye

Justice committee  That's the government review of the program. The government reviews all its programs every five years, and that was an extensive review of the program.

Justice committee  Well, I think I can comment. Can I comment? It's not public? No comment.

Justice committee  All I'm going to say is that it was very positive in the efficiency of the program, and they had recommendations on certain aspects. You may be able to get a copy.