Official Languages committee  In our brief, we discuss how important it is to have a whole‑of‑government action plan to support the development of official language minority communities. It's important to know how to develop that plan and who will be responsible for implementing it. Canadian Heritage is doin

Official Languages committee  Absolutely. As I previously said, I think a lot of studies and consultations have already been conducted on the various versions of this bill over the years. We could obviously make more changes and amendments, but I repeat: it's time to take action.

Official Languages committee  We've done a lot of work for the parliamentary committees, the communities and many stakeholders in recent years, and many reports have been proposed, prepared and submitted. Now I think we're at the action stage. I propose a number of amendments in the brief I've submitted to t

Official Languages committee  What's extremely important at the outset is to establish the necessary structure to ensure it's implemented in the best possible way.

Official Languages committee  The bill must absolutely be effective and impactful.

Official Languages committee  It has to have an impact.

Official Languages committee  I think the decline will continue if we do nothing. In its proposed or amended form, the bill will definitely help slow or reverse the decline of French in Canada. We also have to view the bill in conjunction with the government's action plan for official languages. Those are th

Official Languages committee  It's hard to say whether that will happen immediately after it's passed, but I'm satisfied it will happen over time.

Official Languages committee  Absolutely not. We have to establish the necessary infrastructure so we can train a bilingual labour force, particularly through the primary, secondary and post-secondary education systems. We have to find ways to provide language training that produces that bilingual labour for

Official Languages committee  Mr. Chair, honourable members of the committee, good morning. First, I would like to acknowledge that the land on which we are gathered is part of the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishnaabeg people, an Indigenous people of the Ottawa Valley. I'm very pleased

Official Languages committee  The federal government, the provinces and the communities need to work together. This kind of partnership has to work from the bottom up so that we can eventually adopt a holistic approach. That would promote retention and the best possible integration of immigrants into our comm

Official Languages committee  I look at the situation in terms of the ethnolinguistic vitality concept. What makes a community? A community is a set of individuals, institutions and shared cultural values. Across Canada, communities have provided themselves with institutions and live in French, want service

Official Languages committee  We've never been asked to provide anything like that, and it has never been our intention to supply that kind of information.

Official Languages committee  It's a difficult target to meet, and even if we managed to do it once in 20 years, I wouldn't think that we could say we had truly achieved it. There's ambiguity with respect to the target in the sense that it's not clear whether it's an annual target or a target to be reached ov

Official Languages committee  By welcoming more immigrants overall, it becomes more difficult to achieve any target, whether it's 4%, 5%, 6%, 7%, or 8%, and even more resources would be required.