Official Languages committee  My intervention will be brief. We talked about a permanent structure. There is no structure more permanent than Statistics Canada. There is also the fact that the statistics provided by Statistics Canada are authoritative. Statistics Canada publishes evidence-based facts that ca

Official Languages committee  Yes. As far as early childhood is concerned, four out of five children are assimilated. The answer lies in a number of things. For instance, one solution would be setting up day cares for children in the zero to five age group wherever there is a French-language school in the pr

Official Languages committee  In the action plan, there are funds earmarked for early childhood education. This includes an additional $20 million to support professional development opportunities and training for early childhood educators, as well as to help entrepreneurs open more child care centres and pro

Official Languages committee  Yes, it is very important. That permanent entrenchment in the act will prevent us from always starting over and having to fight for an action plan. We want the new wording to be very specific, and to mention the major issues facing francophone communities, such as the arts, edu

Official Languages committee  Thank you for the opportunity to do so. You are right, Canadian Heritage has no longer been funding statistical research on francophone communities for a number of years. The 2011 census was the last study for which it was done. In the past, Canadian Heritage provided some fun

Official Languages committee  We can certainly state three priorities. Our first priority would be that each agreement between the feds and the provinces should contain a clause about the francophone communities that really meets their needs. Second, before those clauses are written, the francophone communi