I am really glad that you asked that question because I think there is a lot of misunderstanding about it with the public and even people in the government. My job, under the Official Languages Act, is to try to help resolve complaints or inquiries about the government. The official languages unit is in the Government Leader's office. We would have to ask exactly how many staff, there may be five, at the moment. I think there are two permanent and a few that are funded under the Canada-NWT agreement. That unit is responsible for overseeing the implementation of official languages in each government department. They put together all of the funding proposals from each department to be submitted to previously the Secretary of State, now Canadian Heritage. They assemble all of those proposals and get back to the departments to ask them to justify their actions, et cetera. They put together the negotiating package and go to Canadian Heritage to do the negotiating. I have no part in any of that. My job is to see those services and obligations are carried out.
They also provide advice to departments on policies that they require for implementing the Official Languages Act. They oversee the spending of the money that has been received under Secretary of State agreements for the last ten years. Once it is received, then they oversee the spending of that. Those are the kinds of activities. It is a central unit that is in the Government Leader's office that is part of the government. It is their responsibility to make sure the obligations under the act are met.
My job is to act as the appeal court. If someone feels they are not being treated fairly or the government is not providing a service they are entitled to then they come to me and say, I went to this government department and I don't think they treated me fairly, can you help me. That is my job. We don't provide the services. We tell the government you are not meeting your obligation or we think you might be able to do something better here. So we try to help people resolve those problems and try to make suggestions even to government departments to say here is something you might want to try. But it is not our office that actually delivers the service. The services are delivered by GNWT and their institutions and our office is to resolve complaints that people have about those services or programs.