Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Funding and Accountability

Mr. Speaker, the federal Department of Canadian Heritage provides the GNWT with approximately $3.5 million per year for official languages; $1.6 million of this funding is for French language services. The remaining $1.9 million is to revitalize, maintain, and enhance the aboriginal languages. These monies are managed by the GNWT Department of Education, Culture and Employment.

Most of the aboriginal languages funding goes directly to language communities for community projects. The rest is used for aboriginal language training, broadcasting, research, and material development. As well, the GNWT commits approximately $7.1 million per year of its own money for the aboriginal languages. Most of this money goes to the divisional education councils for aboriginal language school programming.

French language funding goes primarily toward translation, bilingual bonuses, and French language advertising, signs, and printing. Some funding is also allocated to the Francophone community for language projects. The Department of Canadian Heritage also provides ECE with approximately $1.1 million per year for French language instruction in the schools.

GNWT departments must provide standard financial and activity reports regarding the Canadian Heritage funding. The special committee is continuing to review how federal and territorial funding is spent and accounted for. The committee is also very interested in assessing what is accomplished with this funding.

Public Comments

Over the past year, the special committee has received many comments and suggestions from individuals and organizations. The most frequent of these have been summarized below:

• • We need stronger and clearer legislation to support the official languages;
• • We need strong leadership to address language issues, especially with the aboriginal languages declining so rapidly;
• • Funding needs to be better coordinated and accounted for;
• • School instruction is very important, so we have to take immediate steps to train more teachers, establish curricula, develop resources, and provide effective language programs;
• • We need family and community-based programs to support and reinforce school programs;
• • We need to improve official languages program and service delivery; and
• • We need to promote all of the official languages and change negative attitudes toward the aboriginal languages and toward French.

Our Guiding Principles

In carrying out our work as a special committee, we have maintained the spirit and intent of the preamble of the Official Languages Act. We have remained committed to the preservation, development and enhancement of the aboriginal languages. We have maintained the belief that legal protection of the languages will assist in preserving our distinct aboriginal cultures. We have upheld the desire to establish equality of status, rights, and privileges among all of the official languages.

We have also found ourselves guided by the following unofficial principles, which have arisen from our research and community consultations:

• • Languages belong, first and foremost, to their respective language communities;
• • Language and cultural diversity is of value to all citizens of the NWT and contributes to the holistic development of our communities;
• • Establishing and maintaining the functional value of the official languages in the NWT is an important, shared responsibility;
• • The governance, funding, accountability, and service delivery structures for official languages must be clear, fair, consistent, efficient, and sustainable;
• • Effective language revitalization efforts must incorporate a combination of the following:
• • a supportive legislative framework;
• • fair and adequate allocation of resources;
• • language promotion;
• • coordinated program and service delivery systems; and
• • family, school, and community-based initiatives.

Mr Speaker, I will now ask my colleague, Mr. Brendan Bell, Member for Yellowknife South and member of the special committee, to continue.