Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Languages embody whole ways of knowing. They are the context and the carriers for the unique accumulated and customized and even hard won knowledge that has enabled a people to thrive in a particular and often demanding environment. As such, we cannot allow them to expire, to dwindle away.
The comprehensive languages review that we are hearing about here today and yesterday has provided firm direction that will hopefully help ensure the preservation and ongoing use of our languages, but the task is, clearly, large. I think we have lost about two thirds of the languages in the world. Unfortunately, the trend in our aboriginal languages in the Northwest Territories is not good. I think this committee has recognized this and proposed a great plan. I am hopeful and I am committed to ensuring that the government will actually adopt it. And then we face the big challenges of implementing it.
Certainly I have concluded that there is really an excellent quality to the analysis and preparation of the options and the presentation of the materials in the report. This is really great work. I would like to offer my appreciation and congratulations to the committee, their hardworking staff and the many language practitioners and promoters who have contributed to this work.
I fully endorse the approach of dealing with the provision of government services under new specifically targeted legislation and the separate effort on the protection and promotion of languages through policy and/or legislation. Whichever it is, a priority for me will be that the chosen approach be clear and there be good evaluation of the effectiveness of it, particularly in regards to the protection and expansion of aboriginal language use.
Of course, the reason we are talking about this in this way today is that the approach we have taken in the past has not been effective. The biggest challenge we face is that lack of success aggravates itself over short time frames. This brings me to what I regard as the largest opportunity that we have in language promotion and that studies of
the development of the human brain have shown and that is early childhood education.
I know the Department of ECE, Education, Culture and Employment, is promoting language nests, I believe the term is used, where there is work starting to happen with very young people, little people. This is where we have a huge opportunity to make progress on this. It is well demonstrated that if very small children from birth or even from before birth up to the age of three or four years of age are exposed to use of languages, traditional languages, they develop the ability to pick up those languages whether or not that is pursued early in life or later. Those first few years are critical. I hope that we actually will move to recognize that in programs that are put in place.
This is a large report and a large plan and it’s going to take big resources. It’s also going to take time. It’s going to take time to implement. We need to be talking to the Government of Canada on legislation and so on. In recognition of this, the committee has included a transitional provisions program. To me, the importance of that cannot be stressed enough. Because this plan will take time to put in place and to fund, we really need immediate and short-term actions to be set in place right away. So I hope this government will recognize that right away and read that provision first and get it going while we do the heavy slogging to get this really good plan adopted and actually in place.
I think that’s really what I wanted to say. Again, the diverse ways of knowing what languages provide are based on the intimate relationships with the land and the different areas of the land, the different environments out there that have developed over eons. As many people know, we are facing a lot of challenges, increasing challenges as human society across the globe. We are seeing big changes in the North, right down to our precipitation and the way we travel on the land, the safety that we used to be able to use, the traditional knowledge to ensure safety and so on, those things are changing. There is so much knowledge in each language that we have and we have 11 official languages and we need to hang onto that knowledge. Yes, we do need to adapt our languages as time goes on and the report addresses that, but to me this is extremely important; diversity of languages and the knowledge held therein is in the order of environmental diversity and the need to preserve that.
So that’s my comments, Mr. Chair. Thank you for that opportunity and I look forward to seeing this put in place. Thank you.