Agreed

---Agreed

Agreed.

---Agreed

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think we have a situation where the Member is looking for guarantees that the French version exactly replicates the English version. Unfortunately, I'm not fluent in French nor in the subtleties and nuances of the drafting language. Perhaps the Member might want to direct his question to the Minister and get a guarantee from the Minister or Mr. Denis as to what the clause means.

Alternatively, although I think cost is going to be a major factor here, the Member may wish to get somebody outside of the Minister's staff but that may well be a substantial cost and a time delay. I can't provide a guarantee that the French version replicates the English version but I would suggest that the Minister's legislative drafts people, particularly Mr. Denis, would be in a position to explain to this House exactly why all the changes are being made to the French version. Hopefully, that will alleviate the Member's concern.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think the problem is not with just clause 2, the title has now changed in the French version. It has probably not changed in the meaning but maybe the grammar. Probably the spirit of the law is still there. However, I do have a problem not so much with this particular clause but as a non-legal person, you have given me a bill that I would never be able to understand as long as I don't go to school and learn the legal language. However, what I usually expect for most amendments to acts, including Bill 5, are clear, explanatory notes.

It seems that the actual bill explains better than the explanatory notes. For example, in those notes what the French version change in the title really means and how it was read is explained. As it now reads, it doesn't indicate if there is any change in the meaning or in the spirit or in grammar. I think that is what Mr. Zoe's concern is. I know we are legislators, but in the spirit and principle of what our people want and for the purposes of protection and service, I think we should have better explanatory notes. Maybe in the next session when we are dealing with these bills. Qujannamiik.

I can read French quite well, Mr. Chairman, but I'm not a lawyer or a legal drafts person. I've looked through these documents here and have tried to figure out the problems Members have. I think you can boil it down to this, whenever you have some ideas and you want to put them down in a language, then the language you choose is going to be the best way in which to represent those ideas you have. Even when you put it down in your language, how close you get to those ideas depends on how good you are with that language. The legal profession has spent many hundreds of years getting as precise as you can a definition of the thoughts that you want to put into legal language.

Sometimes Members are worried because we have tremendous experience with language in the Northwest Territories and people wonder, if you have an idea that you put into one language and the thoughts from your background in that language, whether you can have a perfect match then if you move from one language to another. We know, from our own experience, that it is difficult to get translation precise. It seems to me what we have here is always open to question because whenever you put complex ideas into a language, you always have to worry about the problems and degrees of precision.

The answer I would have expected from the Minister is that we have legal people here who recognize that the original thoughts were put into English and now we have to take those same thoughts and put those into French. And that we have communicated across the country with people in the same business as us, using the same body of ideas, and we have now come up with the best effort possible to ensure that those ideas are now well-expressed in both languages. I'm satisfied, even though I'm not a lawyer, that what we have here is probably the best effort you can have to get this piece of legislation well-expressed in the two languages.

I think if we are going to get into an argument about languages and linguistics and so on, we are going away from what the intent of this bill is. It is to make sure that the best effort is being made to ensure that the bill is well-expressed in these two languages. I'm quite satisfied with what has been done here. Maybe to help Members, though, I wonder if we can get just one translation back into English. What is exactly meant by "bien la societe?" What does that mean in English?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. "Bien la societe" translated into English simply means the partnership property.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Generally, I would like to point out that what has happened to the French version of this act was an attempt to improve the language. We had a chance, since modifications were made to the English side, to look over the French version and improve it. So, technically, there is nothing new, except as mentioned before, there is always room for improvement.

Specifically here in this clause. We are referring to the definition of partnership property in French. Before we had the word "primitivement" which simply means primitively in English. That was not the proper use of the term. We replaced it with initially. Just to put it in context, we are talking about the property that was initially part of the partnership. So, instead of saying the property that was primitively in the partnership, we are now saying the property that was initially in the partnership. Those are the kinds of changes that were made to the act, to improve the language in a general sense, to make it more consistent. That was the idea we had in mind. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Agreed.

---Agreed

Agreed.

---Agreed