The report that is tabled here is now a year old. It only goes up to last March. In that time period -- I started in the beginning of February in 1992, so that was all of the 1992-93 fiscal year plus February and March of the year

before that they were all together -- we opened 187 files. That means that 187 instances occurred where somebody either complained about a situation or asked for information.

Some of those files contained four, five or six different issues. Since that time, we have now decided to give them each a different file number so it is easier for us to keep track of, so of those 187 files, we had more than 250 complaints and inquiries.

In the annual report, in the chapter on complaints and inquiries, chapter five, you will see that it is broken down by general subject area of complaint, but there is a file number listed with each one of those complaints that are reported. You will see that some of them have only one file number. Some of them have up to 10 or 15 file numbers. That means that those 15 files all related to the same subject. So we reported them all together as generally this is what we did on that particular issue, and some of them come up again and again and again so it wasn't worth writing 15 different items with the same complaint.

We are now heading towards 450 files. I think it is 430 as of today, so it just shows the numbers of incidents that occur in our office where people call. They either ask for information, or they raise a complaint about a service not being available or they don't think their rights were upheld - those sorts of things. So we have to investigate all of those.

Sometimes we find that the complaint is not founded. Sometimes the person making the complaint is in error. They misunderstood something or they think something is not available, but they didn't ask the right person, that sort of thing. Some of them are resolved very quickly. Others we find require a specific interpretation of a section of the act and we have to spend quite a bit of time on some of those. Those are the complaints that are quite a bit lengthier in the report.

During the first year, 1992-93, when we were first setting up the office, we went through about three different systems of keeping track of all the complaints and inquiries, cross-referencing everything and tried to find a system that worked well. Finally, towards the end of that year, we found a system that we think is now working quite well. During the first year, we didn't enter all the data about which language or which community the complaints dealt with. But, I can tell you, just off the top of my head, that they come from everywhere. They're not just from Yellowknife, Iqaluit, or Inuvik. They are from all over the place.

This year, now that we've got the computer system set up, we'll go back and enter the language and the community that the complaints came from right from the beginning and for certainly all the new ones we've dealt with this year. We'll try to do it for all the ones before that. That way, we'll be able to provide statistics. I did say in this first annual report that we weren't able to provide statistics because we didn't have all the information put into the computer in the first year. We had to experiment with a couple of different systems so by the time we wrote the annual report, we didn't have all that information compiled for 1992-93.

But, since that time -- as I have said, it is a year later now -- we do have all that in place now and we are able to provide some statistics. We have to calculate them now, based on the information we have in the computer. That will be in the 1993-94 report. I can just tell the Member that, yes, they do come from everywhere. They come from people in government offices, members of the public, native organizations, federal government institutions, universities, many, many different bodies. We try, as much as possible -- if it's not within our jurisdiction or if it is not something we have information about -- to help the person find a solution or find someone to help them resolve the situation or give them the information they need. I hope that answers the Member's question.

I guess it was before that, that I was looking at. You say that GNWT employees complained that they didn't know much about the guidelines for communication. You have numerous complaints that you don't have information on the Official Languages Act. There are native organizations complaining about one week of recognition of French but only one day for recognition of aboriginal languages. You have numerous GNWT complaints about the kind of courses that are offered in Arctic College. You also have complaints about the Secretary of State.

Since this was concluded in 1993, I would think a lot of it has to do with the delivery of programs and clarification. What are we looking at with regard to aboriginal people's complaints? Do you run into a situation where you don't understand an aboriginal person when they file a complaint in their own language or whatever the case? Those are the ones, the grassroots complaints, I'm more interested in. Out of 250 complaints, a lot of them must have been people in Yellowknife trying to get information or trying to clarify their own department's mandate with regard to official languages.

I just got a promotion.

---Laughter

Thank you. I would say that the complaints and inquiries that we deal with come from everywhere. I'm sorry I can't provide stats on exactly whether the complainant or the inquirer was an aboriginal person or not. We didn't take count of that. In the first year, I particularly made a point of trying to travel to some of the communities so that I could get in touch with people. People would approach me everywhere, as I did, even when I was in airports, or staying overnight in hotels or having lunch with people. I was constantly asking people what was going on in the communities and what were their major concerns.

So, I had a lot of contact with people at the grass roots level and some of the complaints came out of a visit to a community, just because it was the first year of the office and I wanted people to know that there was such an office. I actively sought out people to find out whether there were any complaints and to tell people that there was now a process for dealing with that. Sometimes, it involved sitting down with somebody that spoke another language, having lunch with them, and talking about things in their community. I did that quite a few times when I was travelling.

The phone also rings a lot. As I said, we are almost reaching 450 complaints and inquiries. We just calculated the other day that we had about 500 working days since the office opened. So, that's almost one a day, at least. Some days we get three or four or five and other days we don't get any, but then we're doing on the other ones. They come from all over. People stop me on the street. They write, they phone. We're getting them from all over. Quite a few of them do come from people who are trying to find out their rights and obligations under the act, that is true, but they come from all different communities. I wouldn't say that most of them just come from Yellowknife.

Well, I just can't see how you ever find the time to travel with all the complaints you get. One of the things that aboriginal languages have is syllabics. I can remember as a young person, my grandmother reading me stories in syllabics. Tom Sawyer was one of them. Now, in most of the western Arctic at least, terminology is done by roman orthography. I would like to ask how important are syllabics to you and whether you're doing anything to revitalize it or preserve it? I see you as one individual who is supposed to be the protector and to make sure that the aboriginal languages never, ever die. But I see syllabics in the western Arctic as being extinct. How are you dealing with this?

It has been awhile since I read my first report, but in the complaints and inquiries chapter, I think there is some information there about complaints that were received that Dene languages material was translated into roman orthography rather than syllabics. When I received those complaints, I addressed them to the official languages unit and asked what was the government policy on using syllabics for Dene languages. It had been my understanding that the GNWT had discouraged the use of syllabics for a number of years. Being fairly familiar myself with the syllabic system -- I've even worked with Dene syllabics a little bit -- I realize that the existing system doesn't have a symbol for each sound that can be made in the language.

There was a lot of discussion about whether or not we should try to revise those old Dene syllabics so there would be a better system, so they would better represent the sounds of the language or whether we should try to get all people to use roman orthography, which was developed so there is one symbol for every sound. I wrote a letter to the official languages unit and we talked about it quite a bit. I made them aware of the fact that a lot of people, especially older people, want information translated into syllabics and not into roman orthography for Dene languages. The reply was that GNWT does not actually discourage the use of syllabics for Dene languages and if someone were to apply for funding under one of their community grants to do some work in Dene syllabics, they would consider it. They are not opposed to people using it, but it is not the system they are teaching in the schools because they feel it is not an adequate system. As a linguist, from my point of view, the existing system is somewhat inadequate, although older people have used it for a long time to communicate with each other.

I had a number of complaints or inquiries about syllabics for Dene languages. We addressed it to the official languages unit. For those people who did make the requests, I informed them that if they wanted to make a request to Education, Culture and Employment for a community grant to do some work on Dene syllabics, they could do that.

I do receive a lot of complaints about the fact that there are many Dene translations done using roman orthography. People cannot read them. There are lots and lots of papers being produced, but no one can read them. So that is another thing I have mentioned in my recommendations. We really need to look at what our method of implementing these official languages is. Are we really meeting the need? From my perspective, I get a lot of complaints that there is too much time spent, by Dene translators, doing written material when people cannot read it. Many older people have told me if you are going to write it, then do it in syllabics so at least we can read it. But as far as I know, none of the Dene translators read and write in syllabics, at least not to the extent that they would be able to do translations in them. So that is an area I have brought to their attention. As I said, it is not my role to be able to take any of those actions to implement the program. I am not the government. All I can do is make the recommendations and push and encourage them to do that. But I am not the one who puts the program in place, it is up to the government to decide what they will do with that. It is something that is still an issue that needs to be addressed. Years ago, when I worked in Culture and Communications, I wrote a proposal for the then assistant deputy minister to do research on the Dene syllabics so we could at least document them and find how out many people read and write them. I was told at that time, there were some historical documents people had kept, for example, diaries that people have kept for many years and they are written in syllabics and nobody else can read them. It is important historical information and it would be really useful if we could translate them. The people who wrote them generally are unilingual, they are written in syllabics and very few other people can read them so it would be a lot of information that would be lost if the syllabics are not learned, at least to the extent where we can use those resources and transliterate into roman orthography or put them onto tape.

So I support people using syllabics if that is the way they can communicate. The most important thing is that people can communicate. One of the things that bothers me when we talk about people who are literate in Dene languages and maybe ten per cent of the population -- it is hard to say right now -- who we don't include who are literate in syllabics. They are literate too, but in a different system. So when we are looking at Dene literacy, we should take a count of that as well. It is an issue that needs to be looked at more closely. As I said, there have been a few people who have contacted my office and said they would like to see materials in syllabics and I referred them to Education, Culture and Employment for the community grants available if they want to hire someone to do some translation or minutes of meetings using syllabics. That is about all I can do in my capacity. We don't have the funds for someone to do the research or to deliver the program and services. My job is to bring these situations to the attention of the government and to try to encourage them to take action to meet those demands.

You keep referring to the official languages unit, whatever that means, but you are narrowing your broad interpretation with regard to what your responsibilities are. You said you refer some of the things you do to the government. What is the official languages unit you keep referring to?

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.

Mr. Chairman, we did hire the Official Languages Commissioner. We have much say in the direction that she should be taking. I think you should be able to ask us. We have a situation with regard to roman orthography and syllabics. I think we should have more money to look into syllabics as an alternative. If you told me that today, I would support it fully. I'm not hearing it, though. I would have liked to have the whole question of syllabics in the western Arctic looked at. I'm requesting that. I want to see whether or not there is a possibility of having syllabics in the western Arctic preserved and even enhanced. I don't know whether I can make a recommendation suggesting that, but I certainly would like to see you looking into it.

The other thing is, according to the United Nations, they are suggesting that approximately 50 out of 53 aboriginal languages will die or disappear within the next ten years. I don't know whether you're an expert in that area or not, but what if those languages die? Perhaps you have an answer. If not, then I'll accept that, too. My big concern is that if out of 53 languages, we anticipate 50 of them will disappear, we should be concerned. People are not going away. It is not because all of a sudden one tribe has become extinct. It is because of outside pressures. Maybe you could enlighten me on why so many aboriginal languages are now disappearing?

This first annual report is probably much bigger than I expect to do again for an annual report. The first part of the report looks at a number of issues. One thing we wanted to do was provide statistics for those people who need it. Any information that we could provide that would definitely show people statistics that prove that these languages are disappearing. We gathered as much information as we could. Since this report came out, other people have come to us and asked if we know about other sources of information. We are glad to find those out. But, all of those sources of information confirm the same conclusion, aboriginal languages are dying.

The situation here in the territories is not a lot better. If you look at the statistics in chapter one, you'll see that the aboriginal languages, despite all our efforts, are still declining. Now, they're not declining as fast as they are in the rest of Canada. We've done some comparisons to show that, compared to the Canadian average for aboriginal languages, the territories is better off. But, the trend is towards a decline. We wanted to put that information in there so that people who needed that kind of statistical information to convince them would say, all right, now there is some proof.

The other thing we included in there is some rationale about why we care. Why do we even bother? It is interesting, in the position I'm in, how many people come to me and ask why we are spending all this money on aboriginal languages and French, and why we don't just take the money and teach everyone to speak English to get rid of the problem. They see it as a problem. I have a big problem with that sort of attitude because I believe in human diversity. I think our world would be a terrible place if everybody was the same. I happen to believe in human beings being able to be different, one from the other, and language is only one of those many different aspects. I wholeheartedly support people trying to maintain whatever language it is they want to express themselves in because I think that's very important.

When you take a language away from somebody or away from a community, you take away a whole way of thinking. This is one of the things I talked a lot about in my presentation in Ottawa, which is why they asked me to go to Saskatoon to make the same sort of presentation. I have lots of examples to show from my own research where there are differences in the way people think. The language reflects that. Did they think differently in the first place and therefore, the language developed that way, or were they taught that language, and therefore they started to think in a different way? It is sort of a chicken and egg argument. It is hard to know which one came first.

The fact remains, people think differently and they behave differently in social contexts within their families and communities, based on the way that they think and the language they use. I wholeheartedly support people expressing themselves through whatever language they choose. Part of what we did in this report is to provide some rationale because I do, as I said, have many people coming to me saying, why not take all of that money and teach people to speak English and get rid of the problem. There are lots of countries, as we said in the report, where all the people speak English, but they are still fighting with each other, killing each other. So, I don't think getting rid of language differences is going to solve many problems.

I don't know if that's an answer to your question but those are the kinds of things we mention in the report about why we're trying to preserve these languages and why we feel it is important and what happens when you lose all of these languages. I'm trying, at least to the best of my abilities, to do what I can to help change people's attitudes. That is one of the biggest things we have to do so that people feel positive about wanting to learn another language or wanting to maintain the languages we do have. That's why we wrote quite a bit in the first annual report about those sorts of things.

I guess my whole language is part of aboriginal culture but it is also part of a nation. In order to consider yourself a nation, you've got to have your own language, culture and history. I think that's what aboriginal people hope can survive. I've always said that putting aboriginal traditions, customs and laws into the existing white laws takes it out of existence for the aboriginal people. What I see happening is that, more and more, we are putting ourselves into this big pot that is causing us to disappear. I'm sure you realize that. I don't know how to deal with it. You haven't really answered my question on the whys, but I see that as one of the whys for language disappearing. It is because we are legislating ourselves out of existence. I don't know whether or not other Members in this House realize it, but I certainly see it. It is right in front of me. It is happening and I'm partly to blame for being so blind and not recognizing it.

I would hope that in your next report, you will be able to say something more about the whys in more detail. My last question was referring to that, but I think you've touched on it a bit. One of the attitudes is why don't we just spend more money on English as opposed to aboriginal languages and get rid of the problem. In your study, the survey of the policy section of GNWT departments, you indicated that there is a lack of awareness about official languages and that the GNWT has to do some work to develop an awareness and support a framework for the initiative. I ask, how would you propose that the GNWT go about increasing this awareness surrounding the official languages, or do we still have an attitude out there, even in the public service, that it is really an I don't care attitude and it is your problem, you deal with it sort of thing?

One of the studies that you referred to in the annual report -- actually, we did two studies with employees.

One was where we contacted the policy sections of each department and asked them what policies they had in place for implementing the Official Languages Act. This was done almost immediately after I started my job. It was shortly after that we received our direction from GNWT that we weren't allowed to talk to the employees, so then we had to direct everything through the deputy ministers, but we managed to slip this one by before this change in policy came about.

We talked to people in the policy sections and we said, are you aware of the Official Languages Act, do you know that it exists, do you know what provisions affect your department and do you have any policies for implementing it?

In talking to all of those people - the report is in chapter six in the special studies report - it showed that some people cared a lot, some people didn't care at all and a lot of people were confused. Maybe they had heard that there was an Official Languages Act, but they weren't sure what was in there. They weren't exactly sure what their own obligations were as employees. Most of them said they don't have policies within their department for the implementation. So one of the things that we have pushed really hard for within government departments is to say, what are the policies within the department for implementing the Official Languages Act? So we have followed up that way, and by doing that policy section survey, we sort of brought the Official Languages Act to the attention of all of those policy sections.

The other thing that we did was that we sent out 5,000 questionnaires to government employees asking them, did they know that there was an Official Languages Act and did they know what obligations there were, what were the official languages of the NWT and that sort of thing, and the report of that study, again, is in chapter six.

We found again that a lot of people said they had some awareness but they were not really specifically aware of what that means for me in my job. Does this document have to be translated into eight official languages, or what is this about 11 languages; I thought we had eight? But I say, no, there are 11. We have eight, but don't forget Inuvialuktun, Innuinaqtun and Slavey comes in at least two versions, so we have 11. People are still not really clear on exactly what it means. How do we get information out to the public? How do we manage in an office where we have got one or two staff in the region but we have got four languages spoken in this community? How do we deal with that? There are still a lot of things that employees have questions about and the public has questions about, so by sending out 5,000 questionnaires to government employees, we made them start thinking about the Official Languages Act.

So that was part of our public information for employees within the government, and then outside of the government, we have done lots of things on radio and lots of interviews on radio. We now have a major public information campaign going on. All of the rights that are in the Official Languages Act have now been translated in three radio spots in every official language, 11 languages, and they will be playing on the radio for this next month because it is Aboriginal Languages Month and French Week from the 20 to the 26. So all the rights that people have under the Official Languages Act are now going to be on the radio in every community in the territories to let people know what their rights are under the act.

We are sending out information packages to all of the schools. I think all of the MLAs received them. If you haven't received it yet, it is in your mail.

So we have done a lot to try and get people to think about the fact that there is an Official Languages Act and to start asking questions. What does that mean? What does that mean for me as an employee and what does that mean for me as a member of the public?

So we do get a lot of people calling because of that public information that we are sending out. They will call back and say, what exactly is this all about or do I have a right to this or that, so then we explain in more detail to people.

So that is basically what we have done to try and inform people about the Official Languages Act.

You touched on a nerve of the government and they probably don't appreciate the kind of response you are giving, mainly because it has a lot to do with government and aboriginal people. But I appreciate your response and your openness to it.

I guess I would have to say, in conclusion, that basically the reason the aboriginal languages are at such a weak point in their history is because of the attitudes. A lot of it has to do with attitude. I don't even know if the government is the right body to be delivering that program, in the first place.

The other thing is that you did mention in chapter five that there were 250 complaints. I saw you in Fort Norman when you were there. Am I part of that 250? Am I one of the 250 complainants, or was it more of a consultation, because I did talk to you. I don't know whether you classified me as complaining or maybe you were just talking with me, consulting. I don't know how much of this is consultation and how much of it is actual complaints.

Yes, I do have copies of the stuff with regard to the month of March being designated as Aboriginal Languages Month. You have come up with this thing. I also got your postcard, too.

The last time that you appeared, it seemed to me that you were broke, and I am just wondering, did you refer this to the official languages unit to get extra money to develop these? How did you manage this?