Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to just talk a little bit about this motion. Members had spoken about it a bit this week. In doing this review of the Official Languages Act, the committee found it quite difficult to get a handle on just where the department is in terms of what it's doing with regard to official languages.
We noted the Minister had made references to an official languages strategy I think four years ago, but could find no evidence that an official languages strategy had ever been put forward or tabled.
The other thing that was of great concern to committee is the very comprehensive review from the 16th Assembly that was conducted in 2008-2009 had never been formally responded to by the department and the Minister. There were a great number of recommendations in the 2009 report that the department said we can't respond to these because we don't want to bias the work we're doing. Committee really didn't know where the department was at because we had no response to the recommendations from the 2009 report. So this motion is asking for two things. We're asking for an official languages strategy to be tabled, so that we know clearly where the department is going and what their strategy is. We are asking for the official languages strategy or whatever document is tabled to include a response to all the recommendations in the 2009 report.
Committee has received some of that information from the department. A lot of that work has been done, but it isn't in the public realm. Committee would like it to be in the public realm, so part of this request is that the response from the department include a response to each of the recommendations in the 2009 report.
Lastly, the motion asks for the department, that has adopted a new approach to languages and it's not that committee feels it's a bad approach, it's just a new approach and it's unclear how it fits into everything else. So we would like this motion and the committee would like the department to identify how this new approach fits in with the recommendations and the comments from the 2009 report. Thank you, Mr. Chair.