Naturally the French-Canadians of Ontario, of whom there are 250,000, who have in the past enjoyed the right of teaching their language to their own children, promptly and strongly resented all this. But they have not been the aggressive and turbulent agitators which they have been represented to be. On the contrary, they took the constitutional means of going to the Department about the matter. Memorials, representations and calm and dignified protests were made. Delegations were sent to Toronto. On one occasion the chairman of the Ottawa separate school board went to Toronto as the representative of most of the different separate school boards throughout the province. Nothing came of it. Sir James Whitney told them that he was not going to establish RACIAL SCHOOLS in the Province of Ontario, whatever the meaning of that may be. He sought to make them feel that he looked upon the use of French in the Ontario schools as introducing racial schools. Gentlemen, I have to touch on these points very briefly because I know your time is precious, and I do not want to trespass upon your indulgence. I might say that such litigation followed. However I do not propose to go into that as I do not know that much profit could be derived from it in the time which you have kindly allowed me. Then this statute was passed last year, of which we are now asking the disallowance, and I am going to speak of that briefly. I am sure you have heard something of the petitions which have been circulated, not only in the Province of Ontario, but also in Quebec, calling upon the Dominion Government to disallow this statute passed in 1915. The statute has two effects, the validating of regulation 17, which in the meantime was being tried in the courts, and the purpose of establishing the Ottawa Separate School Commission, of which I have no doubt you have also heard. The act takes all the powers from the Roman Catholic Separate School Trustees elected by the Roman Catholic rate-payers and confers them upon the Commission. This Commission--which I shall not qualify, but which I shall describe--was composed of three gentlemen, Mr. Denis Murphy, Mr. D'Arcy McGee, and Mr. Charbonneau. The first two being Irish Catholics, and the other a French-Canadian Catholic.