LANG Committee Report
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In accordance with section 88 of the Official Languages Act, "the administration of this Act, any regulations and directives made under this Act and the reports of the Commissioner, the President of the Treasury Board and the Minister of Canadian Heritage made under this Act shall be reviewed on a permanent basis" by the Standing Joint Committee on Official Languages (the "Committee"). Since the beginning of the 36th Parliament, the Committee held 26 meetings the first session and 15 during the second. Most of the testimony heard during those meetings concerned the implementation of Part VII of the Official Languages Act. A motion passed at the Committee’s organizing meeting held at the start of the second session of this Parliament, on 23 November 1999, states that the testimony heard during the first session of this Parliament concerning its study of Part VII of the Official Languages Act shall be deemed to have been heard during the present session. (The list of witnesses appears in Appendix A.)
At this point in its proceedings, the Committee deems it useful to submit an interim report to Parliament. Although it must still hold hearings in the regions, among other things, the Committee considers it important to share the essential aspects of the testimony it has heard with parliamentarians and all those interested in the enhancement of the vitality of the Francophone and Anglophone minority communities. The background (Part One) to this report contains a brief summary of this Committee’s June 1996 report entitled Implementation of Part VII of the Official Languages Act (Second Report, June 1996, Issue No. 7). Part Two provides an overview of testimony heard on the implementation of Part VII of the Official Languages Act during the 36th Parliament. In Part Three, the Committee makes a number of observations based on what it heard. In the conclusion, it briefly describes the work that remains to be done before it can submit its recommendations to Parliament in a final report.