The honourable Member is seeking unanimous consent. Are there any nays? There are no nays. Please proceed, Mr. Lewis.

WHEREAS section 55(1) of the Legislative Assembly and Executive Council Act requires that there shall be an Executive Council of the Northwest Territories;

AND WHEREAS a vacancy exists on the Executive Council due to the resignation of Mr. Whitford, the Member for Yellowknife South;

AND WHEREAS it is desirable to fill this vacancy;

AND WHEREAS Members of the Executive Council are appointed by the Commissioner on the recommendations of this Assembly;

NOW THEREFORE I MOVE, seconded by the honourable Member for Iqaluit, that this Legislative Assembly recommend to the Commissioner of the Northwest Territories that Richard Nerysoo, the Member for Mackenzie Delta, be appointed to the Executive Council Cabinet.

The motion is in order. To the motion. Mr. Lewis.

Question.

Question has been called. Seconder to the motion, Mr. Patterson.

Very briefly, Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to second this nomination. I have had the pleasure of serving with Mr. Nerysoo since we were both elected to the 9th Legislative Assembly in 1979 and I concur with Mr. Lewis's earlier comments today that Mr. Nerysoo has been awaiting an opportunity like this for some years. He served this House well as Speaker but I think it is an appropriate time for him to apply his considerable experience to the Executive Council. I believe that he has the energy and the desire to do a good job and I have no hesitation in seconding this motion and wishing him and his other new colleagues on the Executive Council every success. I am confident they will do the best job they can in these difficult times and I will say again that I hope they will do so in a renewed climate of improved communication and cooperation. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

To the motion. Question is being called. Mr. Lewis, you have the opportunity to conclude debate.

Question.

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

---Carried

---Applause

Mr. Morin.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I seek unanimous consent to go back to Tabling of Documents.

The honourable Member is seeking consent. Are there any nays? There are no nays. Please proceed, Mr. Morin.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to table Tabled Document 33-12(3), Establishing a "Shell Corporation" by the N.W.T. Housing Corporation. Thank You.

Item 12, Tabling of Documents. Item 16, First Reading of Bills. 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; Appearance of the Languages Commissioner; 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; and, Bill 15, An Act to Amend the Wildlife Act, with Mr. Pudluk in the Chair.

I will call this committee to order. Before we begin, I would like to recognize Mr. Nick Sibbeston. He was a Member of this House for a very long time. He is very well known, a T.V. star.

---Laughter

---Applause

Thank you. We have a number of items. Tabled Document 2-12(3), Bill 4, Bill 5, Bill 6, Bill 11, Bill 15 and the appearance of the Languages Commissioner. What does this committee wish to do? Mr. Nerysoo.

I believe that it is suggested that we deal with the Languages Commissioner.

Does this committee agree?

Agreed.

---Agreed

We will recess for 15 minutes.

---SHORT BREAK

Appearance Of The Languages Commissioner

You have a copy of the report on your table. I would like to welcome the Languages Commissioner, Betty Harnum. Do you have an opening remarks at this time?

Languages Commissioner's Introductory Remarks

(Translation) I would like to thank all the M.L.A.'s for inviting me here to talk about the issues. I will try to clarify some of the things that we do. This is a new program and I do not think that it is very clear to some people. I will try to clarify the job that we do and the kind of things that we have done since February. I will talk in English. (Translation ends)

I would just like to say that I am glad to have this opportunity to speak to the Members because I think that since this whole process of having a Languages Commissioner has started I certainly have learned a lot. I think there is a lot that I can try to explain to the Members. I think there is still some misunderstanding about the role of the Languages Commissioner, exactly who I report to and how I report. Under the Official Languages Act there is an obligation for me to present an annual report once a year, after the termination of each year.

I started working in this job in February of this year, so that year will come to an end in February and that is when I intend to table my first annual report. I knew there were a lot of questions, although they were not always coming to me. I heard that there were lots of questions about what the Languages Commissioner was doing. What is this job? What is her role?

I decided it was probably a good idea to provide the Members with an interim report. You all have copies of that now. It was provided a few days ago so you would have time to look at it if you wanted to before this discussion. I had intended to give it to all the Members in the last session, but the report I did, I had reviewed by legal counsel and I was told to leave certain sections out, because I had listed some of the subject material of every complaint or inquiry that I had received. I was advised that I should not release that information. Section 24 of the Official Languages Act that says that anything that comes to my knowledge or comes to the knowledge of any of the staff working in my office should not be released. It is of a confidential nature, so I decided to leave the section off that dealt with all the complaints or inquiries that we have dealt with in the office.

I am prepared to discuss that type of thing, but only to a certain extent because I do not want to jeopardize any of the negotiations that I am going through with right now, to solve some of those complaints or to provide information for inquiries. If there are questions directed to me about specific complaints or inquiries I may ask to not respond if I feel that it is going to jeopardize any of the negotiations on a specific complaint. Other than that I am more than willing to provide any information about the operation of the office. The report you have in front of you outlines the objectives that we set at the beginning of the year, the steps we have taken so far and are in the process of taking to accomplish those objectives.

It has been ten months since I started this job in February. When I walked into the office it was several empty rooms. I was on my own at that time. I did spend some time just doing things like getting furniture, pencils, papers, faxes, phones, etc. That took some of my time before I was actually able to deal with some complaints or inquiries, although I was trying to do that at the same time. Within this year, although it has only been 10 months, we have dealt with probably 250 complaints and inquiries. Many of those are still in the process of being investigated or I am still working on providing answers to people, because I have to gather information from a lot of different sources and sometimes that takes a while to get.

One of the big things that I think we have managed to accomplish is sit down with the official languages section in Nellie's office and talked about how I should deal with the government because that was a big issue. When we first started, I was simply sending letters to deputy ministers or copies to the Ministers, or sometimes we would be calling government departments directly. Some employees in government departments felt uncomfortable about providing the information. When I met with the Government Leader's office, unfortunately that was the day Nellie was sick, which is a rare occasion, but we decided that all my requests for information would go through the deputy ministers and I would keep the official languages section in the Government Leader's office informed of all inquiries and all requests for information that I was making.

It took some time to work out those things. Even for me to appear here in the House, before I jumped at the chance, because I am more than willing to provide you with the information, I wanted to check myself to make sure that I was not doing anything contrary to the legislation by appearing in the House.

There were a number of issues that were raised. For example, Mr. Antoine asked a question and addressed it to the Minister responsible for the Languages Commissioner, but there is no Minister responsible for the Languages Commissioner. The arrangement is that I report to the Speaker of the House and I work for all the M.L.A.s. There is no Minister responsible for the Languages Commissioner. That raised an interesting question, and again when Mrs. Marie-Jewell asked her question she prefaced it with remarks saying she was not quite sure how to formulate the question, because she did not know to whom to address the question. I think that whole issue has now been dealt with. I looked into it myself and asked a legal counsel, what are the appropriate ways of addressing questions to the Languages Commissioner? Can questions be addressed in the House to the Languages Commissioner as there is nobody here directly responsible for the Languages Commissioner? I report through the Speaker of the House and the Speaker cannot take questions.

I wanted to make sure that by appearing here today I was not doing anything contrary to the legislation. I have been assured that it is right for me to be here and, in fact, that I should be here and that the Legislative Assembly does have the power to ask me to attend. I am glad I am able to do that.

I wanted to fill you in on some of the issues that we had to deal with. For everything we have done this year, it has been the first time that any of these things have happened. Every time I have wanted to go one step forward, I had to go five steps backwards to make sure I was doing things the way they should be done and that I was not doing anything contrary to the legislation.

Another major project that we did this year was get legal advice on the Official Languages Act to find out exactly what it means because there were no opinions other than those that had been done by the Department of Justice, and I was not allowed access to those because they were done for government departments. I was told to set up my own legal counsel and have independent legal advice. We advertised and have a contract now with a legal counsel. Some of this year has been spent going through the act and saying, "what exactly does this mean?" We spent quite a bit of time on that sort of thing.

I think that is all I want to say in the way of opening remarks. I just wanted to give you an idea of the kind of things we have been dealing with. I am happy to be here and I am happy to provide the information to any of your questions. Thank you. Mahsi.

Thank you. Are there any general comments or questions? Mr. Ningark.

General Comments

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to welcome, first of all, Betty Harnum to this committee and thank her for coming.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask the Languages Commissioner how many staff she has at the present time and if this staff is adequate to deal with the demand that is created by the public. I ask this, Mr. Chairman, because according to the interim activity report there seems to be a lot of work that has already been done and there are more things to be done, according to my understanding, given the limited human resources within the Languages Commissioner's office.

Thank you. Languages Commissioner.