Official Languages committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for this invitation to discuss with you a subject about which I am passionate, but which is also important for Canada as a whole: the status of the official languages and the future of our communities. In the few minutes

Official Languages committee  Thank you for your question, Mr. Clarke. There are two parts to my answer. First, I invite you to look at tab 5 of the document. There, you will find the text of the current act. The page numbers are at the bottom. If you go to page 22, you will see the sub-heading of part VIII

Official Languages committee  Precisely, and I recommend that you add it.

Official Languages committee  In my opinion, Mr. Clarke, we need to add the rest of the act as well.

Official Languages committee  Allow me to add a third point to my answer, Mr. Chair, and then I will stop talking. Just like his Conservative predecessors, the current President of the Treasury Board Mr. Brison, has all kinds of powers under section 7 of the Financial Administration Act. I am sorry, unfortun

Official Languages committee  I have a lot of respect for the work you do, of course, but I don't know exactly who you talk to in Canada, Mr. Clarke. I too travel throughout the country—too much, unfortunately—and a lot of people express the opposite opinion. So, it seems that there is more than one point of

Official Languages committee  To respond to the premise of your question, Mrs. Fortier, I must say we think the communities and Canada as a whole are mobilized over this issue. The official language minority communities and francophones in Quebec have been criticizing certain structural problems in the act fo

Official Languages committee  Yes. I have two comments on that point. First, you'll find the wording of the federal act at tab 5 of our document. The page numbers are noted at the bottom. On page 20, you'll find the wording of part VII, which—let's tell it like it is—is cancerous to say the least. If you rea

Official Languages committee  That's correct, Mrs. Boucher. With your permission, I'm going to state those funding criteria: (a) public administration; (b) comprehensiveness; (c) universality; (d) portability; and (e) accessibility. Why not add a paragraph (f), which would be linguistic duality, to this

Official Languages committee  We're here to work, after all.

Official Languages committee  Tab 16 contains a bill sponsored by the late Mauril Bélanger. What did he propose? He suggested that we add this paragraph (f) to the Canada Health Act. I think we could improve Mr. Bélanger's bill by including the idea in the Official Languages Act. To answer your question, Mrs

Official Languages committee  I have two or three comments in response to your question, Mr. Choquette. First, without wanting to repeat what I've already explained, I don't think anyone should underestimate the fact that, when federal parliamentarians say they're in favour of official languages, that's both

Official Languages committee  I don't really know where to begin, Mr. Rioux. Things are going well in some respects, as you can see from the map of Canada's francophone schools, but poorly in others. We need a lot more early childhood spaces, for example, and we need the money allocated to the provinces and

Official Languages committee  That's quite a compliment for a lawyer.

Official Languages committee  First, as a lawyer, I think what Canada needs, and what we need as francophones, as Acadians or as English-speaking Quebecers, are better rights. The only realistic thing to do is to amend the federal Official Languages Act. It would be unrealistic to consider constitutional refo