Official Languages committee  Merci, and good morning, Messieurs Paradis, Clarke and Choquette and members of the committee. I'm Geoffrey Chambers, the president of the Quebec Community Groups Network, a not-for-profit linking 58 English-language community organizations across Quebec. We serve Quebec's Englis

Official Languages committee  The QCGN's objectives in this discussion are not only to offer suggestions on how to make the act work more efficiently and effectively but to seize this opportunity to strengthen the language rights of Canadians. As I said in my opening statement, we firmly believe that Canada's

Official Languages committee  As you know, we raised an objection at the time. We were somewhat disappointed because the citizens who appeared in Sherbrooke to ask questions had intended to address topics that should have been discussed in English. The matter that was placed in front of the Prime Minister,

Official Languages committee  There are a number of umbrella problems, but I think you have referred to what we would probably regard as the most pressing question, which is that the right of English-speaking Quebeckers to receive health services in their language is limited to the specific obligations codifi

Official Languages committee  Precisely.

Official Languages committee  Beyond linking—obviously, that's the first stage—we need to have an active device to look at these service patterns and figure out how to get a good solution, and it will be quite different in different settings. But while nobody's responsible for that, the administrators of thes

Official Languages committee  Most federally regulated businesses have national profiles and already have service profiles that provide good connection with their public in both official languages, so the telecoms, I think, would have no trouble with it. The large transportation industries would have a slig

Official Languages committee  If I may, I would like to start with your first point. The organized French-speaking population of Ontario is a model in terms of its capacity to make representation and provide effective leadership on its issues for the English-speaking community in Quebec. If you go back 50 ye

Official Languages committee  Yes. I guess right now there's a dialogue going on between the federal government and the various provinces in which eight provinces are refusing to sign the new transfer agreements or haven't agreed to them yet, so those funds are being held up. There are provincial minority la

Official Languages committee  Again, the justice system in the Province of Quebec has eroded. For the last six years, I believe, there has been no training for bilingual court clerks, so the supply of bilingual court clerks is dwindling to the point where, as a practical matter, it's impossible to have a bi

Official Languages committee  They are only drafted after the passage of the law, and often not very well, so there are real problems with a civil code correlation of the two statutes, and consequently there are real problems for judges. I could go on. There are quite a few structural issues. We started with

Official Languages committee  That's a very important point. The challenge for us is to be accepted and to take part in community life in a way that enables the majority to consider us as full-fledged Quebecers. We work very hard at that. I think we make good progress on that. As Madam Lambropoulos pointed

Official Languages committee  The commissioner needs to be an active advocate and a promoter. Making him also, as Stephen says, the referee or the sheriff would trammel him.

Official Languages committee  We'd like to see the commissioner continue to receive reasonable resources and, in his complaint-receipt function, to have the tools in parts IV through VII that allow him to act on complaints received. As we know right now there's a problem with the clarity of his authority to d

Official Languages committee  We want to be slightly evasive on that point because it's a matter of government design, which we're not expert at. There seems to be some reservation about putting it with the Treasury Board, which is an enforcement device for the most part and not an advocacy device, although i