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 the basis of which we ended up with the six amendments that are a priority for us.

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 appreciate it if you could inform us of your point of view.

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  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 to decide how they see it.

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 forward on this quickly, and it had already been agreed to by all the parties.

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 be made in the francophone immigration policy, for example, we must ensure that the bill harmonizes with the action plan.

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 2023 budget cycle.

Official Languages committee  No, we wanted our amendments to be foundational and systemic and to cut across the federal government. That's why we chose those six amendments. We selected amendments that would enable real change so we wouldn't wind up in the same situations we've found ourselves in since the present act was passed.

Official Languages committee  The mandate letters were one of many factors we considered in the research we conducted so we could propose wording that conveyed what we expected from the bill.

Official Languages committee  It's obviously important for the whole country to have a strong French presence in Quebec. We want the French language to be a real presence in our communities and for that presence to generate all types of opportunities for exchanges, closer relations and so on. Consequently, it's important to maintain a demographic weight across Canada and to ensure that the French language…

Official Languages committee  Yes. Our goal isn't to create publications that aren't constitutional. We want the federal government, when negotiating agreements to transfer funding to the provinces and territories, to be required to consider the challenges facing francophone minorities. We understand why the government can't require the provinces and territories to accept a language clause if they're opposed to it, but, as you know, the federal government has likely forgotten us and doesn't include us in most negotiations.

Official Languages committee  We and our lawyers have examined all the functions of each of those central agencies. On pages 3 to 7 of our brief, we explain why we think this should be the role of the Treasury Board. We think it's very important to have this central agency, which already has this mandate for other provisions.