It's urgent that we modernize the act, but this should not be a partisan process. We should ask the commissioner whether he is open to the idea of amending his interpretation while we wait for the law to be modernized.
One thing is certain, the bill we are presenting to you today clarifies that. We claim that the law should include an obligation rather than a simple commitment to take the necessary positive measures. We mention a series of positive measures that are already successful practices in several federal institutions, but we are also thinking of cases where the positive measure is not defined.
It's quite clear that the federal government should sit down with the community organizations so that together they can determine which positive measures apply to their situation. I don't think we can arrive at a ready-made definition of positive measures, because it can't apply to all situations.
We defined a series of measures that are already well appreciated: an official languages action plan, binding language clauses, the obligation for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to adopt a francophone immigration strategy so as to maintain or increase the demographic weight of linguistic minorities, and a bilingual federal capital. Those are very concrete measures we could integrate into Part VII, but this needs to be clarified as soon as possible.