My role is simply to deal with complaints or inquiries about those sorts of situations. Our office does not organize any of the provision of services. That is up to the language bureau or the Department of Justice, court services. They call and arrange for interpreters for the court circuits. For the RCMP, if the GNWT interpreter was there and available, they would interpret for them. Certainly, they would for any government department, if they were there and available. The RCMP being a federal institution, the GNWT doesn't necessarily have to provide services to them.
If the RCMP couldn't use the services of the GNWT interpreter or if any of the other government departments wanted the services of that interpreter and they were busy with another assignment, it is my opinion, as Languages Commissioner, that the territorial government has an obligation to make those services available. If they don't have a staff member to do that then they should be providing a contract interpreter.
I know most of the time that is arranged for, but there are some times when they can't find a contract interpreter either and sometimes some assignments or meetings have to be rescheduled because they couldn't find an interpreter. I tried to find interpreters for a meeting a couple of weeks ago for the South Slavey and I couldn't find any so we almost had to cancel the meeting because of that. We ended up resolving it in the end. It is a GNWT obligation, if it is a GNWT service to the public, that they must provide those services. But, it is not our office that makes those arrangements. We would deal with it if there was a complaint about it.