Official Languages committee  Go ahead, Mr. Kong.

Official Languages committee  That is actually in the Constitution Act of 1982, which is above any kind of a political game. I think that linguistic duality defines Canada's fundamental identity and cannot be challenged. Perhaps we need to promote it better with certain groups. I don't know how the issue of

Official Languages committee  Thank you. I do think that would be a good idea if we want to have engagement of the anglophone community outside Quebec, for example, or of the francophone community in Quebec. If we want people to participate in the debate and feel involved in the whole issue of official langu

Official Languages committee  Yes, that is our message to you.

Official Languages committee  As far as consultations go, I was in Moncton—I have mentioned this three times now—and I remember a speaker who said hello to everyone, introduced himself and specified that he was not the leader or president of any organization. That made the people in the room laugh because eve

Official Languages committee  When the institute was created, our mandate was to focus both on francophone communities outside Quebec and on English speakers in Quebec. However, we quickly realized that, from the research point of view, we were dealing with two very different realities. Anglophones in Quebec

Official Languages committee  Doing so is essential, in fact. In one of its reports, this committee recommended that Statistics Canada establish an advisory committee to examine the enumeration of rights holders and thus provide a more accurate picture. If such a provision were included in the Official Langua

Official Languages committee  The federal government hosted two symposiums on research in the area of official languages. If memory serves me correctly, they were in 2008 and 2011. In both cases, it was agreed that the government, academia and the communities needed to work together more closely. It didn't ha

Official Languages committee  At the first forum in Moncton on March 12, Michel Bastarache made another important point. He bemoaned the fact that official language minority communities are now perhaps the only ones who care about official languages. If that’s true, linguistic duality and official languages m

Official Languages committee  Allow me to clarify something. I’m not from New Brunswick. I was born in Ontario.

Official Languages committee  I did grow up in Quebec, though, and I’ve been here for about 20 years, so I may have picked up the accent in my neck of the woods.

Official Languages committee  As for the institutions, yes, they have an obligation. It’s possible to reinforce that obligation in the act. It is possible to set up an official languages tribunal and to give the commissioner more of an enforcement role. I’ve learned something though, throughout my work on the

Official Languages committee  Yes.

Official Languages committee  No, on the contrary. I think there would be greater mobilization around the act. Adopting a five-year plan would allow societal changes to be taken into account. Does society change so quickly that the act would need to be reviewed every 10 years? I think it would be a good ide

Official Languages committee  Yes, but what really comes to mind is the work that’s done under the Canada-community agreements, as we used to call them. Nowadays, we talk about contribution agreements and direct involvement in the communities. The current model was developed in the 1990s.