Official Languages committee  I'll let Mr. Corbineau answer that question.

Official Languages committee  It's important to point out that the oil industry has, in part, collapsed in our province.

Official Languages committee  However, if I stick to the numbers about school enrolment, for example, especially in St. John's, the number hasn't decreased, quite the opposite. It has continued to increase, which means that there is still some stability in the francophone community in the province, especially

Official Languages committee  Just having emerging communities indicates that there is some dynamism. There is a certain need and desire to live in French in the communities that are not necessarily structured the way the three western communities, Labrador and even St. John's are.

Official Languages committee  Yes.

Official Languages committee  I'll let Mr. Corbineau answer.

Official Languages committee  In that case, Mr. Chair, I will skip the introduction since it is the same as the earlier one. I won't remind you of the importance of this for our communities and for maintaining their demographic weight. You are probably already very familiar with it. As we have already said,

Official Languages committee  Do you want to talk specifically about official language programs in education?

Official Languages committee  The agreements are bilateral, and federal-provincial. We are not involved in them at all.

Official Languages committee  Let's say that the funding or receipt of the amounts has greatly improved in recent years. As Mr. Corbineau said, since the funding no longer goes through the Ministry of Education, the school and community centres that were funded through federal-provincial agreements actually r

Official Languages committee  There is no doubt about that.

Official Languages committee  We got the impression that the department had found the money at the back of a drawer and realized that it had to get rid of it quickly before the elections. That’s our impression, anyway. We only had a very short time in which to decide what to do with that $3.5 million. That i

Official Languages committee  As I said in my presentation, networking is one of the things that we really need. It is something we have to be able to do. We also need to be able to identify judges, even lawyers, who are bilingual. We know that they are out there. The question is knowing how to keep track of

Official Languages committee  It includes young people too.

Official Languages committee  To my knowledge, the FCFA has not received an explanation. When we were told about the amounts—it seems to me that it was last winter—it was like a $3.5 million present, or like manna from heaven.