Official Languages committee  They've opted out of one section, paragraph 23(1)(a), which allows people who have had their education in English outside of Quebec access to English schools. The Government of Quebec does not recognize that part.

Official Languages committee  Basically, in terms of education, it's the number of families who have applied for eligibility certificates from the provincial government. That's the basic method of telling us how many students there are potentially.

Official Languages committee  You can apply for an eligibility certificate with the government or through your local school board. You fill out a form, a school board submits it to the government, and assuming there isn't a problem with it, then you get a nice blue piece of paper that says you're eligible.

Official Languages committee  It's transferable from generation to generation, and it's for all. If one child has it, then they all have access the same way. We encourage families to get an eligibility certificate for every child, because eventually they'll have their own families, and if they have the certif

Official Languages committee  The reality is that when you take your five-year-old by the hand to go and register for school, you're not thinking about your potential grandchildren. That's the reality of it, and that's why we need to know how many there are.

Official Languages committee  I know.

Official Languages committee  Just briefly—although I don't do anything briefly—questions about whether or not people are rights holders will help the people who do not know that they're rights holders understand that they actually have the rights holders in their families. The example I can give you is tha

Official Languages committee  The reason we're asking for this type of data is that many people don't know they have a rights holder in the family, so they never even look to the English system. We need to know who is out there, and right now we don't have that information.

Official Languages committee  We have 100,000 students in our system already; somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 students attend French-language school because that is what their parents chose.

Official Languages committee  They come from the Quebec government, which tells us what our population size is, including how many children with certificates of eligibility are in the French-language system. Those are the only numbers we have.

Official Languages committee  A portion of them may be, but many families do not know they have a rights-holder. That is the case even today, even though Bill 101 has long been in force. A lot of people just don't know.

Official Languages committee  It's very important to us that we know how many people there are. We need the real figures. It's a matter of planning for us. There are numerous cases. We have 340 schools, and more than two-thirds of them have fewer than 200 students. Those 200 schools with fewer than 200 stude

Official Languages committee  Laval is an exception.

Official Languages committee  The Laval area is an exception to the rule.

Official Languages committee  I am not.