Official Languages committee  The act that was done by the hospital administration— which, as you have probably read, was condemned by the local mayors and quite a few other members of the majority population—reversed a practice that had been in place for 50 years and, more interestingly, for 40 years under t

Official Languages committee  Well, speak up. You've been very effective and diplomatic, but have spoken from a position of moral authority in regard to some matters in Ontario, some matters in New Brunswick. When you look at what happened with the ambulances in New Brunswick—incidentally, in a situation in w

Official Languages committee  In this case, it was a school big enough for 800 students, but with 458 students. The empty spaces available could be used, based on an agreement between the school boards, by the Commission scolaire Marguerite-Bourgeoys.

Official Languages committee  Yes, that's right. It was already there to serve the francophone population, which did not have enough resources. There was already an agreement. To transfer a school, the legislation governing education in Quebec requires a very well-defined process, which takes about 18 month

Official Languages committee  The QCGN would also like to lend its support to the motion adopted by the committee last week that a meeting be convened with the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada, the Commissioner of Official Languages, the minister of Tourism, Official Languages an

Official Languages committee  Thank you very much. Good morning, Monsieur Paradis, Monsieur Choquette and members of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Official Languages. It is our pleasure to be with you again as we all continue to contemplate the modernization of the Official Languages Act. We ar

Official Languages committee  Well, there is no minister appointed in the current cabinet. The cabinet is quite small, and the explanation given to us was that, as a result of that, the premier was going to take responsibility for this. With the help of a parliamentary secretary, we've applied to meet the pre

Official Languages committee  We will.

Official Languages committee  As you can imagine, it was received positively. We are very pleased that the process of defining how it's going to be deployed has been undertaken by the department together with the community, and we're going through a very productive consultation, so that's gone very well.

Official Languages committee  There are two points we want to leave you with today. One is how important the current crisis in Ontario is, how much we appreciate everybody pulling together, and how much we feel it's necessary to continue with this exercise. The more important long-term one, other than the pu

Official Languages committee  We want to be slightly evasive on that point because it's a matter of government design, which we're not expert at. There seems to be some reservation about putting it with the Treasury Board, which is an enforcement device for the most part and not an advocacy device, although i

Official Languages committee  The English-speaking community used it right back to its inception, and it's often used in support of pan-national issues that we care about. In an earlier life, I was the executive director of Alliance Quebec. We intervened in the Manitoba language rights case. I was in Manito

Official Languages committee  Yes, that was the Court Challenges Program. There were many examples in between. It's been very important to us in securing our own rights, but it's important to characterize it as a national tool to create a set of principles that all official language minorities profit from. W

Official Languages committee  Yes, we're very pleased there's going to be such high-quality judgment applied to who gets the support that the program offers. James Shea is a wise and a very good appointment, I think.

Official Languages committee  The Human Rights Tribunal, I think, is the model we have been looking at. It's possible that, if we had a deeper discussion with them as to whether or not there are powers they don't have now but would like to have, we could come up with a model that has more muscle, but it would