Official Languages committee  Mr. Chair, committee members, good afternoon. I'd like to thank you for inviting me today. As you know, the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada, or FCFA, is the national voice of 2.8 million French-speaking Canadians living in minority communities acr

Official Languages committee  The six amendments we are proposing would help stop the decline, or at least slow it down. If we build it back up and increase the demographic weight of francophones, it will certainly help stop this decline. That's only one example, but what we are proposing is a combination of

Official Languages committee  Of course, by asking for the Treasury Board to act as a central agency for all parts of the act, we are requesting accountability for the full implementation of the act. We took it for granted that there would be accountability measures for everything that we were proposing. Tha

Official Languages committee  I think they might be getting more receptive to discussion of late. We will therefore continue to…

Official Languages committee  Thank you for your question. I'll repeat what I said earlier. For us, what's important is that the work be done quickly, but properly. It's important to conclude the debates on the amendments quickly because, as you know, the process of modernizing the Official Languages Act beg

Official Languages committee  Mr. Iacono, I believe I'm going to ask you a question, because there's been a great deal of discussion since we've been here. Could you tell us what you think about our six amendments?

Official Languages committee  Yes. We strongly advocate, suggest and recommend that they also be extended to part VII of the act.

Official Languages committee  Oh, oh! Mr. Généreux, as I mentioned earlier, we conducted an in‑depth study to ensure that everything we would be asking for would be foundational and have repercussions across the federal government. We have a substantial piece of work that contains several recommendations, on

Official Languages committee  As I mentioned, what we're really trying to do is ensure that what we're asking for takes these fundamental changes into consideration so that they can improve the status of French in all areas. But if you feel that one of our requests is less important than the others, we would

Official Languages committee  If so, we will be able to explain why we feel it's essential. I don't know if that's possible in a committee like this one, but that's what I would tell you, because for us, all six amendments are a priority.

Official Languages committee  Yes, they should be clarified. Our proposal on that is that the wording of Bill C‑11 should be added to Bill C‑13, as I said in my opening remarks about the Broadcasting Act. We did that because all the political parties had already approved it. As you know, we want to move forw

Official Languages committee  At the FCFA, the values we support are those of the various minorities around the table. It's not up to us to comment upon what is appropriate or inappropriate for another minority. We have been advocating the “by and for”, as you know, for a number of years now. It's up to them

Official Languages committee  All right. Do you want to answer, Mr. Dupuis?

Official Languages committee  No. Mr. Gourde, when I referred to the 2023 funding cycle, I was talking about the Action Plan for Official Languages because it's a five-year plan and consultations for the next action plan, for 2023‑2028, are under way. That's why I said that. If we want major investments to b

Official Languages committee  No, we submitted nothing. I'm talking about the consultation process concerning the Action Plan for Official Languages, which is conducted by the Minister of Official Languages. That process is ongoing and will wind up in the fall so those funding requests can be entered in the 2