Yes, I have to say that I see the role of an ombudsman as basically a mediator to help parties come to an agreement. They mediate solutions, they don't impose solutions unless...If my legal counsel suggests that there is a breach of an act then I have to say to the government there is and if they say there isn't and we cannot come to an agreement and a solution that works for the complainant, then I have the obligation or the right, the duty, under the act to take the government to court. I would hope that we would never have to do that.
As far as challenging the legal advice that I receive, I always bring my point of view, based on my legal counsel, to those discussions with the deputy ministers who bring their advice from their legal counsels to those discussions. Therefore, we are constantly challenging each other back and forth. Letters are written about the information and our points of view, our legal opinions on this and that, back and forth and it all goes to the official languages unit. Yes, there has been that avenue of challenge to the opinions that I've received and likewise for GNWT to say this is how we interpret it and when they respond to me then I say well, I don't see it that way based on my legal advice and this is what I would suggest. I don't see the role of an ombudsman as a heavy hand. That is a last resort.
In talking with other ombudsmen at the National Ombudsman Conference in Toronto in November, where there were ombudsmen from all over the country and also from other countries, they have said even the federal Languages Commissioner's office which has existed for 25 years, they very, very, very rarely ever go to court. The federal Languages Commissioner's office has gone to court maybe five times in 25 years. It's the very last resort if you cannot work out a solution. I don't want this role to be that. I see it as trying to be the mediator who tries to help the parties come to an agreement. If we cannot come to an agreement, if appropriate action isn't taken, it says in the act I can then go to court. I don't want to use that as the method of coming to an agreement. I think it would be costly and it would cause what I would think would be like a backlash against the implementation of official languages. It's not my role to try and get people to be defensive about trying to implement it or to make people feel that I'm forcing it on anybody. My role is to try and get people to understand why we're doing this and how we possibly can do this reasonably, given the dollars and the manpower that we have, to try and get people to come to some reasonable solution, without spending a fortune to go to court or hold public hearings that would cost a lot of money and may, in the end, not resolve things any better than some informal approach might have done. I prefer that avenue and I think, just in talking to other ombudsman from around the country -- not just from Canada, but from other jurisdictions -- that is the way an ombudsman is meant to operate. I've adopted that practice.