Official Languages committee  As you may suspect, I absolutely cannot venture an opinion on that subject. Statistics Canada stands apart from the evaluations that are conducted in the context of programs and interventions of policy-oriented departments. Consequently, I cannot at all venture an opinion on that

Official Languages committee  As I've already told you, the methodological elements that Statistics Canada uses are essentially based on statistics. That is not necessarily the case of the departments directly concerned by the roadmap. That's all I can say on that point.

Official Languages committee  The only answer I can give you to that question is that we at Statistics Canada measure progress over time in the conventional way. We conduct an initial survey, then we conduct a second. This enables us to see what has improved, what has declined, what has increased and so on. M

Official Languages committee  The first was conducted at a cost of $7.5 million.

Official Languages committee  It of course becomes difficult to monitor things over time, to see them progress or how they evolve. That is how we operate at Statistics Canada when we try to measure progress or regression.

Official Languages committee  Thank you for the question. As you know, second language instruction is an extremely broad field of study. There has been phenomenal growth in the number of schools offering French-language immersion programs outside Quebec, particularly since 1975. What is clear is that many pa

Official Languages committee  Yes, there are those kinds of indicators, absolutely. As we mentioned, those indicators are based on certain sources of information that must be available. The question that arises is always comparability over time. Just considering the example of economic development, we can cle

Official Languages committee  Quebec's immigration policy seems to be working very well. Of the total number of immigrants who arrived in the five years preceding a census, 70% can speak French. Of course, that is not what we are seeing outside Quebec. However, interprovincial migration will always be a facto

Official Languages committee  As you know, Statistics Canada is not affected by the roadmap, and Statistics Canada is of course making no recommendations. Having said that, I would like to give you one observation. As I mentioned in my remarks, we have a lot of contact with various federal and community part

Official Languages committee  It was definitely an excellent survey to the extent that it was the first time there had been one of that scope. It should be pointed out that the survey specifically targeted 15,000 parents who were interviewed and 19,000 minority francophones and anglophones. So the 11 theme po

Official Languages committee  I really can't venture an opinion on that.

Official Languages committee  In fact, I am not really familiar with that work. All I can tell you is that the survey on the vitality of the official language minorities was conducted in accordance with highly scientific criteria.

Official Languages committee  The census?

Official Languages committee  I would say that we achieved 100% coverage of the population with the four linguistic questions in the census. In fact, the response rate was 98%. So we expect to have a very good estimate of the numbers and proportions in the various municipalities across Canada.

Official Languages committee  As I mentioned—