Hon. Ginette Petitpas Taylor, P.C., M.P., Minister of Official Languages and Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency: Thank you very much for that important question. We certainly have a lot of work to do to address the demographic weight issue. We recognize that French is in decline in Canada and in Quebec. If we look at some statistics, in 1971, the francophone population outside Quebec was 6.6%. Projections indicate that it will be 3% by 2036. That is a 3.6% loss of francophones outside Quebec, which is huge.

That is why we drafted this bill with Minister Fraser. We want to go further than Bill C-32. We want to make sure we have an ambitious immigration strategy with targets and indicators. If we want to adjust this country’s demographic weight, we need targets and we have to do the work to meet them. We want to establish this policy for francophones outside Quebec, but we also have to make sure we can offer French integration services to immigrants to Quebec.

Once again, I’m very happy I had the opportunity to work with Minister Fraser to make sure that Bill C-13 includes an ambitious immigration policy complete with targets and indicators. This is a step in the right direction towards correcting that loss of demographic weight in this country.

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Hon. Yonah Martin (Deputy Leader of the Opposition): Minister, a 2018 report by the former Veterans Ombudsman found that francophone veterans were waiting longer than anglophone veterans for decisions from Veterans Affairs Canada after applying for disability benefits.

According to an Order Paper answer tabled in the Senate, francophone veterans are still waiting longer than anglophone veterans. As of last February, the average processing time for applications was nearly 39 weeks for francophones and 31.5 weeks for anglophones.

Minister, since your government has been aware of this situation for four years now, why does it continue to accept this inequity in the treatment of francophone veterans when it comes to the services offered?

Hon. Ginette Petitpas Taylor, P.C., M.P., Minister of Official Languages and Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency: Thank you, senator. It’s always nice to see you, and you are quite right. With 8 million francophones in Canada living amongst more than 360 million anglophones from coast to coast to coast in North America, protecting the French language warrants special and immediate attention. Protecting French and promoting French internationally are also top priorities for me. Minister Joly and I are promoting it because we want to make sure we’re doing our part to protect our French language. The digital world is indeed causing some real concerns, and we must work tirelessly to ensure that French is used equally on the international stage.

Hon. Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu: Welcome, minister. My colleagues, Senators Dagenais and Cormier, have pointed out two flaws in your bill. I will tell you about two more. The day before yesterday, the federal Minister of Transport, Mr. Alghabra, stated that Canadian National Railway, CN, must set an example by appointing francophones to its board of directors. Unfortunately, that was merely lip service because Bill C-13 does not have a mechanism for requiring the appointment of francophones to the boards of directors of corporations that are subject to the Official Languages Act.

Why didn’t you include something in the bill to require influential companies such as Air Canada and CN to appoint francophones to their boards of directors? Also, why doesn’t Bill C-13 provide for the inclusion of language provisions in agreements between the federal and provincial governments so that francophone minority communities can have French-language services in their province?

Hon. Ginette Petitpas Taylor, P.C., M.P., Minister of Official Languages and Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency: Thank you so much for that. Yes, it’s a very important issue. When I became the Minister of Official Languages, in putting together the new Bill C-13, I really wanted to ensure that all Canadians saw themselves in this legislation. Being a francophone who lives in New Brunswick, and belonging to an official language minority community, I know the importance of protecting and promoting our rights, may it be anglophones in Quebec or francophones outside of Quebec. That is why, in the piece of legislation we brought forward, we have enshrined in the legislation, if you will, to ensure that the Court Challenges Program was not going to be optional for future governments. We want to make sure that the Court Challenges Program is going to remain, because it is an important tool for many official language minority communities to use when their rights are not respected. So moving forward in the bill, we wanted to make sure that was defined there as well.

Finally, my message to English-speaking Quebecers and to francophones outside of Quebec is that we want to ensure that people are aware that, through this legislation, we want to protect the official language minority rights all across the country. It is absolutely imperative that we do so, and again, as I have indicated, if I had the advantage of living in Moncton, studying in Moncton and doing my post-secondary education in Moncton, it’s in part because of the official languages legislation that existed when I went to school.

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