Thank you. Languages Commissioner.

No, I did not have a complaint about that accord. I have met a number of times with T.F.N. and a number of people in that area about the use of official languages in Nunavut. I have talked to them a number of times and that was one of the particular issues that I was dealing with at that particular time. I am also doing community consultations and I have been to a number of communities to gather information. I was there not only because of that signing, I had other meetings that I did during that time.

I was also on my way to Rankin Inlet because I met with the Keewatin Regional Council, which was meeting immediately after that. I went there to make them aware of the fact that there is a Languages Commissioner and an Official Languages Act.

At this moment, I am supposed to be in Hay River meeting with the D.C.I. Board but I have had to cancel that. I am trying to go where there are meetings going on, where there are representatives from a number of different communities and where they can carry the information back to the communities that there is a Languages Commissioner and that there is an Official Languages Act and what it is all about. That is the purpose of those community visits.

Mr. Gargan.

So it is on the basis of requests of those organizations that you are travelling.

Thank you. Ms. Harnum.

Sometimes it is. There is also a provision in the act for me to conduct my own investigations if there are issues that I feel are of importance and need to be looked into.

I have a number of things that I have been looking into in that area and I have met with people there from different organizations and different groups a couple of times, in the process of dealing with those. I would call those small investigations, not full-fledged investigations. At this point I am considering myself to be doing one of those, but I have a number of issues that I am dealing with in the eastern Arctic communities. If I can go to a place where there are representatives from a number of communities like a regional council or if the T.F.N. Board happens to be there and I need to talk to those people then I will go there. I was trying to go to the D.C.I. Board meeting today. I try to get to those meetings whenever I can.

Thank you. Member for Deh Cho.

Mr. Chairman, the Languages Commissioner also said that she has had 250 complaints. There are 261 working days in a year. At that rate, by the time the year end comes up you would have had to deal with at least on and a half complaints per day. You did say that you went to Iqaluit to investigate some small complaints. I do not know whether or not the justification is there for you to look at that type of travel for a small complaint. I would like to know, how are you addressing the rest of the complaints? It is a lot; you would have to travel every day for 250 days of the year if that is the case and still maintain this interim report that you have done which is very long. I am interested in finding out how you justify your travel.

Thank you. Ms. Harnum.

I said 250 complaints and or inquiries. A lot of them are inquiries for information, such as, "What does this section of the Official Languages Act mean," or, "Has this Official Languages Act been translated into my language? I want a copy of it, can I get one?" When I am saying complaints and inquiries, they are not all complaints and they do not all require investigations.

When somebody does complain and I have to do some searching around or meeting with people I try, if possible, to meet with them in person. I also try to gather a few of those, so if I am going to one place I can deal with a few of them all at once. There are some days when I get three, four or five people calling complaining about things. The other thing that happens is that I do try to make myself accessible instead of staying in the office. When I am out I notice things myself that need to be dealt with, but people often approach me in the airport, on the planes or in the restaurants. A lot of people are starting to know that there is a Languages Commissioner and they come to me on a regular basis and talk to me about things and say, why this, or, why that, or, what does the act say? I have been trying to make myself accessible.

Sometimes, the complaints that I am talking about are not from somebody phoning me, but from my going out to the communities and, when I am there, they will talk about something which otherwise might not have been brought to my attention.

Thank you. Mr. Gargan.

There are a lot of flaws with regard to this Official Languages Act. Do we expect any provisions to this act soon?

Thank you. Languages Commissioner.

One of the things that I have spent considerable time on this year, as I mentioned, was with legal counsel, trying to analyze some of the sections of the act as to what they mean and whether there are any legal precedents in the courts to help us analyze how some of these sections might be interpreted if a person went to court to get an opinion. I have questions about the French translation as opposed to the English version there are some discrepancies there which I have some questions about.

Those things I intend to bring to the attention of the House in my annual report. There will be a section on the areas where I think the act is weak. These are the areas where I think that, perhaps, Members want to accomplish more than this act will allow them to and the limitations of what this legislation says. I spent, as I have said, a fair amount of time this year with legal counsel going through what the act means and what it is going to mean if somebody wants to go to court to say the act was violated, I was denied a right. I intend to provide that information in my annual report. It is something that is going to take some time to write up because I have dealt with a lot of issues on the act.

Thank you. Are there any other questions? Mr. Antoine.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I raised a question in the House a little while back about some things I have been hearing in my constituency. You stated that you work for all the M.L.A.s. As M.L.A.s, what we are doing here is working for people in the communities, and the Languages Commissioner's job is to be the official person there responsible for all the official languages in the north; the east, as well as the west.

In the west, we have numerous languages and dialects. We have different nations right down the Mackenzie Valley and we have different dialects which are distinct from each other in a lot of cases. I feel that, once again, we have been ignored in the valley. What you are saying to Sam here is, you decide on your own sometimes to do investigations and you go on your own. However, when I first talked to you, after I questioned you, you said that you travel in communities when you are invited and that, once you get into the communities, you find out that there are a lot of concerns about languages.

My concern is that you have not chosen to travel into any of the Dene communities. You have travelled quite extensively in the east. I would like you to turn your attention to the west also and not ignore us any more. My main concern was a particular case that was brought to my attention but, in reading your report and seeing what you have done up to date and talking to you in the hall about being invited and so forth, I feel rather annoyed that you are saying different things to different people.

However, right now, I want to turn to my main concern, which has to do with the standardization of writing for Dene languages. I understand that there was a joint effort between the Department of Culture and Communications and the Department of Education some time back, when the report was presented to the Minister of Culture and Communications of the day. I understand, also, that the report was presented to him on April, 1990 and the Minister of the day stated that he accepted the report.

The concern here is from people who were involved in this standardization project; these were people from the five Dene regions along with a linguist, I understand, who made a number of recommendations and one of the main recommendations is where the problem is. That recommendation is that the writing of the Dene language should be standardized. I have been hearing that this recommendation is not being followed.

The concern is that it is causing problems with people who are trying to use the written form of Dene languages. I have been told that the Department of Education has its own language specialist. Even though Culture and Communications is now included in Education, Culture and Communications had its own linguist as well. Arctic College has teachers in the translation and interpretation course who are teaching their own variations of writing. I do not really know about the legal interpretation course. They may have used some of their own.

Also, there are individuals who are researching some Dene languages in my area, writing Bibles and dictionaries and so forth, who are using their own forms of writing. There is a mixed bag of people who are trying to achieve the same thing in a different way. There is a lot of confusion. The people in the communities and regions who are trying to use these languages are finding some problems because there are different ways of writing the same words and same sentences. I am just relaying to the House and to you the concerns which have been expressed to me. I am also concerned because, once again, the Dene are being ignored. This should not happen. A recommendation was made in 1990, it is clear and the Minister of the day accepted it. Why has it taken this long to be achieved? There are people in the field who want to see these changes. I want to see these changes too. I do not know if it is in your mandate to deal with these kinds of issues. If it is, how can we correct this problem? Thank you.

Languages Commissioner.

To the first part of your question, I have no intention of ignoring the Dene communities. I have done quite a bit of work in those communities. Even though I have not visited all of them, I have visited some of them. There are 65 communities in the territories. I have travelled to lots of different communities and some of them have been Dene communities. I have not ignored them. The other thing that we have been doing is all of the telephone surveys. Surveyors are actually doing surveys in the communities for my office. If I have not been there, we have gathered information from every single community by doing those surveys. We are not ignoring them in any way. Those surveys are still going on right now.

I have dealt with a lot of issues on my own, identifying things that needed to be dealt with and writing letters to try to resolve some issues, dealing with Dene languages as well as Inuktitut and French. If there is any appearance that I am ignoring the Dene communities, I certainly I do not feel as if I have been, and I do not have any intention of doing that. I still have a few months left in this particular year and I intend to do more travelling and concentrate more in the western Arctic because it has certainly been pointed out to me that I still have lots of communities in this region to visit.

As for the last part of the question about the standardization of the writing systems, first I should say that when you addressed the question to me the other day, or last week, I drafted a reply immediately but there was some confusion about who should give the reply. It was one of those formalities that still had not been resolved. It was the first time that a question had been addressed to the Languages Commissioner so we were dealing with the question of whether to give this reply in the ordinary manner through the Government Leader or not.

The next day when the motion was made by Mr. Gargan to come to this House, it was suggested that I might as well wait and answer the question while I am here rather than doing a written reply. That would then give us time to resolve the issue about how questions should be directed to me and how they should be responded to. It is the same with the question that Mrs. Marie-Jewell addressed to me; I have all the details here and I am in the process of drafting a written reply. I informed her that if I was not to appear in this session, I would provide her with the written response before the end of this session. If I was going to appear then, perhaps, she could address those questions while I am here. The one reason why I did not respond immediately to those things was simply because of that idea of the formality, in other words, what is the proper procedure for putting questions to me and my replying?

The whole area of the standardization of writing systems is a very difficult one and people have been dealing with it for a long time. With the Inuit language, for example, they did a standardized writing system in 1976 and it is still not entirely accepted. There are still people who use some of the older symbols or they do not use the new finals, and that sort of thing. Even though it was endorsed by the Inuit Cultural Institute for people to use, there are still some discrepancies. For example, Northern Quebec chose to make some differences and in the Delta they chose to make some changes to the Roman writing system as well.

With the Dene languages I am very much aware of the process that went on for the standardization. I know a lot of those people and I have worked with them quite a bit. I have taught Dene literacy myself and I am aware of some of the changes that were proposed. I have not even learned all the new symbols that were proposed. I did write to the government to ask whether or not it was ever formally adopted by the Assembly; whether there was a motion to say that this House formally adopts and sanctions the use of the new standardized writing system from the Dene Standardization Committee. To my knowledge, that has not been done. Although the Minister says that he accepted it at that point, I do not know if this House has ever said, "we want that new standardized writing system to be used." Even if that were to happen, we would have to look at what measures would have to be in place to make people use it. It requires teaching and I know that there is some teaching going on in the communities to get people to know about that new writing system.

There is some reticence, too, because a lot of people just became literate in Dene languages and Roman orthography within the last five or ten years, and already they are being asked to change their spelling. That would be like us being asked to change the way that we spell a lot of words in English. Should we be told to switch the American spelling of night, n-i-t-e, and so on. It is very difficult to get a whole group of people who use a language to agree to adopt a change and having it implemented right away by everybody. I realize that there are problems in that area and I am certainly willing to try to assist with whatever can be done to help groups to come to an agreement, not only on the writing system but also on the use of terminology. That is another big area in which people are having a very difficult time coming up with standard translations for a lot of words and there is no mechanism for standardizing that either. I do not know if this Assembly is the right place for a motion or whether there is some other way but it would be a great benefit to the users of native languages, I think, to have one organization designated as the standardizing body for terminology or for writing.

The Dene Standardization Committee dealt with the writing system but a lot of people in the communities do not recognize that, asking questions like, "who gave them the right to change the way I write?" There is some opposition to change. I certainly support the work that was done and I will do what I can in your communities to try to help people accept the new writing system and the standard writing system. I would be glad to visit the communities and talk to them about it.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The specific area that I am interested in is the standardization of written Dene languages. That is the concern. I am not particularly interested in the standardization of terminology or anything like that but the main starting point would be the writing form of the Dene languages. I think recommendations were made by people from five different regions and the person representing my region is looked upon as the expert in our language from our area. The recommendation there is good, we support it.

This body is the one that has the funding for the official languages, nobody else has. I think this is the place to do it. I think most of the people with whom I have been working on the languages have been in government departments, Education, Culture and Communications and Arctic College. It is not people in the communities who are developing some of the language and writing and getting proficient at it. The way of writing the Dene languages has been taught by these different government departments, so I suppose the suggestion there is that this is a good place to start to standardize the Dene writing system. That is what I was getting at. I understand your answer but I was wondering, how do you go about it? Do we go through the government or do we go through you? Thank you.

Thank you. Languages Commissioner.

Under this legislation I have no rights or powers to force the government to do anything. The powers that are given to me in this legislation are to make recommendations. What I do is take the information that comes to me from the communities and make sure that the government is aware of it. If there are concerns in the communities then I would like to know about them. I would like to be able to draw that from a number of different sources so that I can say it is not just this one person or just this one community that wants it. I am able to make the government aware of the fact that this is an issue that is important to a lot of people so that they do pay attention to it. As far as the teaching is concerned, I did write a letter to the department asking what efforts were being made at teaching those new writing systems. You did mention Arctic College, Justice, Education and Culture and Communications. I know most of the staff that work in those offices and I have talked to them over the last few years and try to keep in touch with most of them. I know that they are all trying to use the same system but outside of the government, how do you tell somebody who works with a particular church, or who comes as a contractor for the government, you have to use this particular writing system. I know that is one of the areas in which there is some difference between what the churches are doing when they are reading and writing in the Dene languages and what the government is doing. I do not know what the answer is. Is there some way of forcing people to use a particular writing system?

Perhaps, as I said, this Assembly could make a motion to say that all contractors who work for the government shall be using the standard orthographies and all government departments must use it and must check. For example, I have had a number of complaints that signs are spelled incorrectly when they go out to the communities. When they finally do get them in a native language, there is a complaint that they are not spelled properly. Maybe there should be a procedure in the government for having all of those signs or publications checked to make sure that they are done in the standard that is accepted by the government.

Whether it is writing systems, terminology or whatever, the whole problem lies with who has the authority to force people to follow that particular writing system. That has kind of been a vacuum. There is no body, other than this Legislature I suppose, saying, "this is our directive to the government. Make sure that all our departments and institutions follow that." Outside of that, I do not know if there is another mechanism that you can use to make every individual conform.

Thank you. Mr. Antoine.

What I was concerned about was this one particular issue but we seem to be getting into your jurisdiction, your process and your terms of reference. You do not seem to have a good grasp of how things work yet. That is what my impression is right now with my specific questions and your answers. Perhaps my question was directed to the right place in the first time. It seems to me when I asked the Government Leader about this language issue, I was directed to deal with you but you say you do not have the authority or the power to deal with it, you are just there to make recommendations. I just do not feel comfortable.

The Dene language is very important and this Legislative Assembly made it an official language, but I cannot seem to get a good grasp at it. I would like to see this particular thing happen but you are telling me you do not have the power. The government is telling me that we have to deal with you. It is very vague and I cannot really grasp it and I do not know where to go. Perhaps it is lost in the process. I would like this particular concern of mine dealt with right away and the people who have expressed this to me have said that time and money have been expended by the Legislative Assembly in the past to come up with recommendations, the Minister has accepted the report, including the recommendations that are included in the report, and one of them specifically deals with this particular standardization of writing the Dene language.

Every day, as we sit, people have been taught in different ways and the specialists in our area are sending alarm systems out and asking me, can you raise this? I raised it in the House and I suppose that is one of the reasons why you are here. What I would like to see is this particular concern of mine from my particular constituents dealt with. I do not know how you do that, but I want it to be dealt with. Thank you.