Official Languages committee  It all comes down to the political will to implement the legislation. Even if we have the best possible wording, we won't make any progress without political will.

Official Languages committee  As I mentioned in my presentation, according to the legal advice we've received, we sincerely believe that such corrections can be made through regulation.

Official Languages committee  I would hope that, if the federal government has the political will to modernize the act, it'll also have the political will to implement it through regulation, for example. We'll also have to see what's in the action plan for official languages.

Official Languages committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Dear Committee members, listeners, good morning. Thank you for inviting me to appear before this committee on the impending modernization of Canada's Official Languages Act, or OLA. The modernization of the OLA has been eagerly awaited for several years. T

Official Languages committee  Thank you very much for your question. I believe that the one thing we've been requesting for a number of years now is an alignment between the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the federal Official Languages Act. We would therefore like New Brunswick's linguistic spec

Official Languages committee  Thank you for your question, Mr. Iacono. My colleague, Mr. Chaisson, can finish answering this question. Without repeating myself on matters pertaining to fields of jurisdiction and the decentralization of immigration in the province of New Brunswick, I think that we also need t

Official Languages committee  Thank you for your question. I think I should remind parliamentarians that section 95 of the Constitution Act, 1867 specifically provides that immigration is an area of shared jurisdiction. Subsection 16.1(1) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms provides that the two o

Official Languages committee  Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the Standing Committee on Official Languages. My name is Alexandre Cédric Doucet, and I am president of the Acadian Society of New Brunswick, the organization that represents the Acadians and francophones of the province of New Brunswick.

Official Languages committee  We at the SANB are represented by the FCFA. They submitted a proposal for a bill two or three years ago. I believe that over 80% of the recommendations were accepted. The SANB also submitted a brief, and most of the recommendations were also accepted. That's why I said in my pres

Official Languages committee  Things are going well in general. Our funding was just renewed for three years. However, we often forget what happened in the past. During the last economic crisis, we faced significant cutbacks. Funding for organizations was affected, especially for advocacy organizations. Righ

Official Languages committee  Yes, we have always asked that the specific nature be included in the preamble, so as to tie this in, as I said earlier, with Part IV of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which covers the provision of services, as Mr. Beaulieu said, and with Part VII, which covers immi

Official Languages committee  We are looking at that model, yes, but we have no agreement at the moment to go out and get more funding. The office responsible for immigration in New Brunswick has only six or seven employees, so it can't even handle francophone immigration files separately. They have to proces

Official Languages committee  First, demographically, we are going to have some challenges. Today, admissions are not a major problem. In five years, however, we will have a major issue. That's what the studies that have been done on this are already telling us. In addition, the current infrastructure is ver

Official Languages committee  In the past few years, all in all, New Brunswick's provincial government, Progressive Conservative or otherwise, has lacked the political will to implement concrete measures on official languages. We are now looking to the federal government to take the lead. The only thing we'r

Official Languages committee  It is.