Official Languages committee  No, we're not recognized by Quebec as a minority language, and I understand why. There are laws and whatever, but the mechanics of it don't have to go so deeply as to when the feds ask to give out money. I'll give you the example here that in other provinces, services agreement

Official Languages committee  If I may, I would like to double back to Mr. Choquette's question around governance. I feel that the federal government is sometimes timid in the way it asks for accountability from Quebec in terms of language clauses, in terms of accountability on monies coming in, so each dep

Official Languages committee  I could give it a bit of an idea here. We need to demonstrate to the rest of Canada the social capital that the English-speaking community of Quebec represents. One of the pieces of work that was fascinating in the Townships, as one townshipper to another, is that we did a st

Official Languages committee  One of the things that we know for your consideration in looking at the road map is that the first action plan and subsequent road maps have not had quid pro quos for the work that cannot be done in Quebec. An example is immigration. In the title of the last road map, the three

Justice committee  I can support that in the sense it is our understanding that the notion of parent, and who is a parent and how that works, could become a test case, because when the Mahe decision came out things had changed. Jurisprudence and the communities have evolved and so it would be consi

Justice committee  I just wanted to add something. The issue around the provincial government is certainly critical, but most of the worries we have in the provincial government are of provincial jurisdiction. I think the other major improvement to the program would be to have it cover the federal

Official Languages committee  We've calculated that we get 23% of the road map funding. I'm going to be really clear on the road map. Since its initial inception in 2002 with the action plan, it has not been able to capture and give the English-speaking community what it needs. The gaps have been there since

Official Languages committee  I'll give you a big example. It's the biggest one. It's the elephant in the room. It's immigration. The immigration department cannot do anything for Quebec, it would seem, and this has been going on since 2002. In the first road map, it was $9 million; in the second road map it

Official Languages committee  It's an operational question. There has to be a recognition that the English-speaking community needs to build capacity in certain files. For example, we do not have any youth groups. There is no youth group that is specifically funded to come and visit you. If you asked for a yo

Official Languages committee  One of the reasons the English-speaking community moves away.... Moving away from one region to Montreal is one issue, but moving away from Montreal to Toronto or somewhere else is the biggest issue. We have an incredible brain drain of our youth and of our middle class. What

Official Languages committee  We've been supporting it for years.

Official Languages committee  Working together on behalf of minority communities has always been, for the FCFA and the QCGN, important. We have believed at the QCGN—and this situation should change—that government is not helpful in assisting both communities to find their place in terms of funding, because s

Official Languages committee  It's project funding. It's not core funding. In the rest of Canada and in Quebec there are groups that get core funding. That is really important to our groups. Core funding is given to 22 groups in the the QCGN. The pot is small, and you can imagine that nobody wants to give an

Official Languages committee  Come and visit.

Official Languages committee  May I add something? I think what's important as well is that in Quebec, less than 1%—I think it's 0.9%—of the fonctionnaires are English-speaking, so while sometimes political will might be there, you know, it's partisan, or it changes every four years or whatever. You know ver