I did have two meetings with the Government Leader. At both of those meetings, she referred me to the assistant deputy minister responsible for official languages and
said that she was responsible for meeting with me on a regular basis and that is where our concerns would be addressed. I meet with them, now, once a month and we do address all of these things. A couple of months ago, I asked for this protocol to be reviewed and we decided to postpone it. They asked that we postpone it. We discussed it very briefly at the last meeting, but they said, because I was coming to the Assembly that, perhaps, many of these things would be discussed here and so, perhaps, it would be better to wait until after this discussion, so I agreed to that.
I will explain in a letter to them all of the reasons I have reservations about the existing protocol. We do meet on a regular basis and try to address these things. Sometimes they are addressed more quickly and resolved. Others seem to be taking a long time. This particular one about my being able to talk directly to government staff rather than going through deputy ministers, and that process, I know that the government has asked the deputy ministers to comment on that existing protocol, because we have been using it for a while now. They have asked them to comment so, with their comments and mine, we can look at it and come up with something more workable. I am afraid that I have to be true to the legislation. It says that the Languages Commissioner will conduct the investigation. Given the resources that we have, myself and now two other staff, we still have to be very much involved in those investigations and not just send off a letter and expect somebody else to do the work for us and then send it back to us. I have been dissatisfied with that method of investigation. I don't feel that I get all of the information that I need. Sometimes, I will get a letter back and it raises more questions and I have to write another letter and wait another few months. It is a very long, drawn out process.
I think GNWT is willing to sit down and review this protocol. They had agreed to review it after six months, but it is over a year now that we have been using that protocol. It is on our agenda for the next meeting. Hopefully, as a result of these discussions in the Assembly, there will be some better direction. Part of it revolves around what authorities the Languages Commissioner has to conduct investigations. There are no specific provisions in the act and that is part of where the problem arises. We may have two very different interpretations of what those powers and authorities are. If I think that I have the authority to contact government employees and the government doesn't so they tell their employees not to talk to me, how do we resolve that on an everyday basis? Without any clear direction or any clear definition of powers in the act, it could go either way. I suppose the only other way, if it is not clear in the act, is to go to court to ask for an interpretation of what the authority is if we can't come to an agreement.