Part of my role as Languages Commissioner is the promotion of official languages, and one of the areas that I consider my responsibility within that promotion is to help people understand the needs, any problems that arise and any possible solutions.
Even for the RCMP, if they were to call our office, or if somebody complained to me about interpreting services not being available to the RCMP, I can tell them that it is not necessarily my jurisdiction, but I can offer them some solutions. That is basically what I was asked to do with regard to the Saskatchewan issue. For example, we have dealt with the RCMP, and we have provided them with some ideas on how to provide interpreting services.
I did receive one complaint particularly about an incident with the RCMP, and I was able to explain to the complainant that according to the NWT Official Languages Act, the RCMP didn't have obligations to provide service in aboriginal languages, as this one was dealing with an aboriginal language. But there were some other language rights or legal rights that they had under the Criminal Code, so I was able to explain those to them and provide some ideas for a solution.
So part of my role, I think, is to help people understand how they can solve some of their problems, even if it is an institution that is not obligated by our NWT Official Languages Act.
A lot of people call me for information about what the obligations are, what law the obligations arise from and how we can go about solving this problem, because a lot of other institutions don't have that kind of expertise.