The motion is in order. To the motion.

Question.

Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? Motion is carried.

--- Carried

Bill 16 has had second reading. Item 17, Second Reading of Bills. Item 18, Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters: Tabled Document 2-12(3), "The Justice House", Report of the Special Advisor on Gender Equality; Bill 4, An Act to Amend the Public Trustee Act; Bill 5, An Act to Amend the Social Assistance Act; Bill 6, An Act to Amend the Commercial Tenancies Act; Bill 11, An Act to Amend the Legislative Assembly and Executive Council Act; Bill 15, An Act to Amend the Wildlife Act; Committee Report 8-12(3); and Committee Report 9-12(3). By the authority given to me by Motion 11-12(3), the hours are extended today until such time as the Committee of the Whole reports progress with Mr. Ningark in the Chair.

The committee will now come to order. When we concluded yesterday, we were dealing with the appearance of the Languages Commissioner. We have a number of items before this committee. We have Bills 4, 5, 6, 11, and 15, and Committee Reports 8-12(3) and 9-12(3). What is the wish of the committee? Mrs. Marie-Jewell.

Mr. Chairman, the committee would wish to continue with the Languages Commissioner, and then we could follow with the Standing Committee on Agencies, Boards and Commissions Report on the Denendeh Conservation Board, Bill 15, and Bills 4, 5, 6, and 11, if we are all willing to stay here until midnight. Thank you.

Thank you. Do we have the concurrence of this committee to deal with the Languages Commissioner, and then A.B.C. Committee report, Bill 15, 4, 5, 6, and 11?

Agreed.

---Agreed

Appearance Of Languages Commissioner

Sergeant-at-arms, will you bring in the Languages Commissioner? Welcome back to the committee, Languages Commissioner, Ms. Betty Harnum. When we concluded yesterday, we were in general comments. Do we have any more general comments? Mr. Patterson.

General Comments

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have listened to the presentations with great interest. The Commissioner for Official Languages comes across as a person who has done a great deal of work on the detail of the Official Languages Act, who has looked into the legalities and organization and seems to be a very kind person. I believe that we are looking for this person to be the champion of aboriginal languages in the Northwest Territories.

Some advice that I would give to the Commissioner is when she makes her first annual report, I would encourage her to use what authority she does have which is based on the power of public opinion and her independent status.

I would urge her not to question whether she has the legal authority to enforce government departments to take this legislation seriously, and take the concerns of the Legislative Assembly seriously, but rather not to hesitate to demand compliance with the spirit of this legislation. I would suggest to her that she should not hesitate and she will have the full support of this Legislature. If she is aggressive and forceful, she should not hesitate to criticize or even slam government departments that are not making the efforts.

Mr. Chairman, with the greatest of respect to the Official Languages Commissioner, I know that having worked in government she may well be quite sympathetic to departments that are having to deal with limited budgets and staffing problems in meeting their commitments, I do not think this is something she should worry about, that is the department's problem. The Languages Commissioner should not worry about how they meet their obligations or how to force them to meet their obligations. She should be telling the public and the Legislature it must be done.

I hope that departments will come to be afraid of this report. Fearful of being criticized and having their shortcomings revealed in no uncertain terms about their commitment to aboriginal languages. My free advice to the Languages Commissioner, and I understand that she is just getting going and getting organized, is to as quickly to put aside those administrative problems and be careful of lawyers and legal opinions.

We will expect your report to breath fire and to shake up the departments who are not complying, to light fires under them and to challenge and if necessary to shame the bureaucracy. I would encourage the Languages Commissioner to go for it, Mr. Chairman, with all our blessing. This does not require a reply. These are only comments that I wished to make. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Mrs. Marie-Jewell.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yesterday prior to concluding, I had asked the Languages Commissioner a number of questions. In reviewing yesterday's unedited Hansard, all the questions that I had asked were not answered. I would like to ask the Languages Commissioner if she would be willing to reply to the questions I posed in the House yesterday? Thank you.

Thank you. Is the Languages Commissioner prepared to answer any questions?

Yes, Mr. Chairman, thank you. I was intending to continue to reply to the questions. I think I was just starting on part seven of the written question on the service contracts. I am not sure if I finished answering number six. In answer to number six, I did indicate that there are no prescribed organizations because prescribed is prescription by regulation and there are no regulations under the Official Languages Act yet. It is something that I have been pressing the government to develop and have offered to assist with this. Because there were no prescribed organizations, I chose to meet with as many groups as possible and I did provide the Members with a list of those organizations in the interim report that they have.

There are many other organizations that we have contacted by telephone. As I mentioned, we were doing telephone surveys all summer so we were contacting hamlet offices, C.E.C.s, daycares, and all sorts of different organizations to gather information from them. I do not have all of that information compiled yet, because there is a lot of information there. I do not know the exact dates, and it would be a lot of information to provide the House.

However, if there are further questions with regard to number six on dates, duration and location of all the meetings which I have had, I would have to do quite a bit more research to compile all of that. I did provide the Members with a list of the organizations that I have met with personally. That does not include any of the organizations that we have contacted by telephone survey, or any of the individuals we have contacted by community surveys.

I indicated that there are about 1,200 individual community surveys that we have done, as well as a survey of all government employees. We have about 1,300 of those back. If that suffices to answer number six, I will go on to number seven.

In response to number seven, the number of service contracts so far from my office is five. One of them is for legal counsel with Carol Roberts. She is originally from Hay River. I did advertise for legal counsel and had a number of bids. I selected her on an interim basis, because one of the other firms, which is located in Yellowknife, was actually my first choice. At that moment, they had a conflict of interest because they were working for someone who had brought a case to me that they wanted me to get involved in. This lawyer stated that he could not be involved as counsel for my office because he was already involved in this case. That case lasted about three months. It was a case that was brought to me shortly after I started, and it was with regard to whether I could be involved in a court case. Carol Roberts provided legal counsel and is just finishing up on some things that we have dealt with over the year. There is a contract now with John Bayly and Associates for legal counsel. The contract for Carol Roberts was originally $10,000 and we have added about $2,500 to that. It will be determined by the final billing.

We had a contract with Riki Sato. She developed the questionnaires that we sent out to the communities and the government employees, and also did an initial policy search of all the government departments, calling all of them and asking them what policies they had in place for the implementation of the Official Languages Act in each department. That contracted lasted about six weeks and it was $5,000.

Benoit Boutin, who is here and I introduced him yesterday, is currently working on a contract which will be ending shortly. It was for about three months, it is $7,000. The purpose of that contract is to develop the logo, letterhead, business card, brochure, posters, and other information that is required as a public information package in all the languages. I gave some Members a copy of the draft brochure yesterday. It is just about finalized now, and shortly it will be translated into all of the languages and circulated. It contains a summary of the Official Languages Act, because I have been asked numerous times for the Official Languages Act in various languages. As the government is not currently providing it, I decided to do a summary of the act and have the brochure translated into all of the languages so that we can get the information out to people as soon as possible.

The other contract that we have is a service contract with Xerox, for the rental of the xerox machine and that is $20,000 a year. Those are the contracts from my office.

There are a couple of issues to address with the last question. One is under section 22.1. I will begin by reading that section and then I will make some comments before I report on it.

Section 22.1 says, "if after carrying out an investigation under this act, the Languages Commissioner is of the opinion that any matter should be referred to the government institution concerned for consideration or any necessary action, the Languages Commissioner shall report that opinion and the reasons for it to the Government Leader and the deputy minister or other administrative head of the institution concerned."

Generally, I have understood that to mean, when I finish an investigation, if there were recommendations that I would make to a department...

Mr. Whitford, point of order.

Point Of Order

Thank you, Mr. Whitford. The honourable Member is saying that we do not have a quorum here. Clerk, would you ring the bell, please? Thank you. Languages Commissioner, would you please continue?

I will explain to the Members who just came in that I am finishing answering a question from the Honourable Jeannie Marie-Jewell. I am responding to number eight of her written questions.

In reporting matters to the Government Leader, the arrangement that was made most recently when I met with the Premier's office was to send a copy of all my correspondence to the official languages unit that is now within the Premier's office, and I have been doing that. Prior to that, because we had not established guidelines for my reporting relationship with the G.N.W.T. for ensuring that there was some arrangement to follow up on requests for information and clarification of issues that I address to them, I did not always send a letter to the Government Leader's office on inquiries that I was doing.

However, I have addressed 35 letters to the Government Leader's office with regard to complaints and inquiries. Some of the things that I dealt with were done by telephone, so I do not have letters on those. Some of them were resolved by just making a telephone inquiry and providing the information to people. The ones that required a significant amount of information or written replies are the ones that I have addressed. I am waiting for a number of replies on those issues.

When I looked at this section, I mentioned yesterday that I have distinguished between large and small investigations, and I interpreted this section to be investigations which are of a more serious or a more detailed nature. Those are the ones that I have sent letters on and as I said just recently, since we have established this arrangement, I started sending copies to the Government Leader's office on everything.

I think that concludes the remarks that I can make with regard to the written question from the honourable Member.

Member from Thebacha.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I quote back to pages 1111 to 1114 of the Hansard. Mr. Chairman, there are some areas in these replies that do not give us a time frame. For example, at the bottom of page 1113 and the top of page 1114, it says from August 7 to 12, the Commissioner went to Ottawa, and then from October 13 to October 17, she went to Cambridge Bay. With that reply are we to presume that from August 12 to October 13 she stayed in Yellowknife with no travel whatsoever?

Thank you. The Languages Commissioner.

According to everything that I recorded in the financial statements and all of my travel claims and my daily log, I did not make any trips during that time. If I did, they were holiday or something other than business travel. I do not think that I have to report holidays. I did not think that the question would include that. I honestly do not know now. I would have to look back to see if I made any personal trips during that time. I do not think I did. I actually have holidays written down here on my list. I think I was in Yellowknife at that time.

Thank you. General comments, Mrs. Marie-Jewell.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, there are a number of time frames that are in between the reported travel schedule when Members were questioning the whereabouts of the Commissioner and whether she was in Yellowknife or travelling in other areas. Are we correct in stating that all the travel done by the Commissioner's office for the purpose of duty travel is stated as recorded in yesterday's Hansard? Thank you.

Thank you. Ms. Betty Harnum.