Honourable senators, “English and French are the official languages of Canada and have equality of status and equal rights and privileges . . . .”

That is what the motion is about. That is what our Constitution states. It is one of the pillars of our federation.

The Senate and the principle of federalism are closely linked. The purpose of the Senate is to accommodate the vast differences between the regions and the provinces. It was created to counterbalance the demographic representation of the other place. The federative pact depended on explicitly obtaining equality in the upper chamber to represent regional and minority interests.

In the Reference re Secession of Quebec, the Supreme Court of Canada points out that the respect for and protection of minorities represent an unwritten constitutional principle of Canada.

The Senate is the ultimate institution for representing every segment of our society, including official language minority communities.

As the highest court in the land unanimously ruled, the Senate is a national forum for minority groups:

. . . that did not always have a meaningful opportunity to present their views through the popular democratic process.

Historically, this lack of a forum put not only francophone minorities but also indigenous peoples at a disadvantage, since the latter were not even included in the Confederation pact. Indigenous peoples also have traditional languages that are at risk of extinction, and recognizing that reality does not take anything away from other minorities.

Today, the Senate once again has a constitutional obligation to speak out loud and clear for the protection of the language rights of the Franco-Ontarian community, which has suffered some tough blows lately: the position of French Language Services Commissioner has been eliminated, and plans to build a French-language university in Ontario have been scrapped.

On top of that, it was reported yesterday that one of the major players in Franco-Ontarian theatre, La Nouvelle Scène, will no longer receive a grant it had been promised to help pay down its debt. This morning, we learned that the Centre franco-ontarien de ressources pédagogiques is losing a grant that enabled it to publish three magazines for children.

My motion should not be perceived as interfering in the decisions of a provincial government. But there is no question that these budget cuts send a disturbing message to the Franco-Ontarian community. That is what we must focus on.

Let’s be clear. The Government of Canada has a duty to defend the half a million francophones living in Ontario. They are the largest francophone minority group in the country. This duty is clear: in the Official Languages Act, a quasi-constitutional act, the federal government made specific commitments to enhance the vitality and support the development of official language minority communities. The commitments include the following:

Encourage and assist provincial governments to support the development of English and French linguistic minority communities generally and, in particular, to offer provincial and municipal services in both English and French and to provide opportunities for members of English and French linguistic minority communities to be educated in their own language.

Encourage and assist provincial governments to provide opportunities for everyone in Canada to learn both English and French.

Consequently, the Government of Canada must take positive steps to assist the provinces with official languages. This could take the form of a financial contribution under an agreement, for example, which would be in keeping with the federal and provincial constitutional jurisdictions.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms provides that there is no limit to the authority of Parliament or a legislature to “advance the equality of status or use of English and French.”

As a Quebec senator, I believe that it is my duty to present this motion in solidarity with my fellow Canadians who live in French in the rest of the country.

While travelling through the provinces and meeting these communities, I have seen firsthand their strength of character and also the challenges and obstacles faced by these people, who are trying to live in French in an anglophone environment. You have to be strong to hold onto your language when faced with the immense pressure of anglicization. You have to be strong to pass this beautiful language on to your children in a globalized world where young people live in English-only virtual networks. Our language is under attack in Quebec, even though we live in a francophone majority setting. It is easy to see that here in Ottawa, the nation’s capital, and throughout Ontario, the threat of anglicization is a thousand times greater.

That is why it is important for Franco-Ontarians to have institutions “by and for” francophones to prevent assimilation. We need French educational institutions, from daycare through to post-secondary institutions. It is much more difficult to live in French and hold onto your language when you are studying in English or even at a bilingual university.

The comparisons are not perfect, but they should give you an idea of the discrepancies in the services provided to linguistic minorities across the country. As far as post-secondary institutions are concerned, Quebec has three anglophone universities to serve a community of 657,000 Quebecers whose mother tongue is English. In Ontario, where there are 530,000 francophones, the French-language university that is being axed would have been the only university “by and for” francophones.

The elimination of the position of French Language Services Commissioner could have serious consequences. The commissioner was the watchdog for French services, an independent ombudsman dedicated to a single cause. Franco-Ontarians could count on the commissioner to enforce their rights and ensure that the government met its obligations to them.

We should all be concerned about the fate of these communities from coast to coast to coast. I hope that my colleagues will support this motion so that we can show a united front on such a fundamental issue of identity for Canadians as language.

Thank you.