Official Languages committee  We are talking about federal involvement. However, a community support program in an official language includes support given to community groups. There are many examples of this, but I will provide you with two. For the black community of Caribbean origin, learning French seems

Official Languages committee  It's a real mixed bag, and not only with respect to staffing French immersion programs. To have a school in Val-d'Or fully staffed one way or the other is very difficult when the teachers sometimes are coming from 40 kilometres away each morning. The problems are not more intensi

Official Languages committee  Not to a great extent. We don't have the numbers with us, but the percentage of first nation students in our collective system is not that high. There are concentrations, some at our Western Quebec School Board and some at our Eastern Shores School Board, but the numbers are not

Official Languages committee  Just very quickly, Mr. Chair, we're obviously quite conscious of where there are provincial jurisdictions. It's our understanding that, first of all, there are many aspects of education, as we've discussed, where it's the federal government's purview to take action. Again, there

Official Languages committee  One other thing we would point to—one of the many where we insist that there's a mirror looking at both, that is to say linguistic minorities in Canada, in the other provinces and in Quebec. —is immigration. We understand that there are limits on who can come to our schools, bu

Official Languages committee  Well, we understand that the official strategy of the current Quebec government is not to sign such ententes. It is to simply repatriate resources with no structure in place.

Official Languages committee  Well, we would want to make sure there are checks and balances in there that clearly protect our requirements.

Official Languages committee  No. We'll give you one that is in there now that had better survive, which is that the community is consulted on the use of that money. All of the things we use it for are the fruits of our suggestions to both the Quebec and federal governments. The protections ensuring that it i

Official Languages committee  That's certainly—

Official Languages committee  That would be one. If I might, I'll point to just a few other things again with the notion of preparing things for our community. To start with, when we know that still there are perhaps 3%—or it might be 4% now—of the massive Canadian civil service in Quebec who are from the

Official Languages committee  There are two things here. Obviously, we are trying to do two things, as Ms. Dénommée mentioned. First, students will try to improve their French skills. However, if you ask any of these parents, they will tell you that their children are going to an English school. There is the

Official Languages committee  No, it varies. We have nine school boards. In the program required under the Education Act, there is a threshold, and we exceed that threshold by 100 %. We go beyond it in one way or another in the Gaspé area and in other regions.

Official Languages committee  I think we would point to a number of general things and specific things. It's not by accident that in our remarks we talk about the overall environment in which we work. We are English-speaking institutions in Quebec. That's not always an easy mandate with whatever the governmen

Official Languages committee  You will note that one of our assets is this interest on the part of parents. We believe it may be similar to what is happening in French-language school boards where people speak their mother tongue. Given where we live and parents' concerns with their children growing up in Que

Official Languages committee  As a general rule, there is more than one hour per...