Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you, Mr. Moses.
Findings and Recommendations
The standing committee is deeply concerned by the attitude of disregard displayed by the department with respect to the 2009 review and hopes that future reviews of the Official Languages Act will be received respectfully and treated more seriously.
A. The failure of the Department of Education,
Culture and Employment to provide a final, public response to the 2009 report had the following impacts:
1. The department did not articulate which
parts of the 2009 report it agreed with and was prepared to implement, nor provide any rationale for those recommendations it rejected;
2. The department, without adequate rationale
or substantiation to the standing committee, implemented a model for official languages programs and services that differs from the one proposed in the 2009 report; and
3. With the exception of the department’s initial
response to the 2009 review, none of the information provided by the department in response to the review is in the public domain.
As a result, the department failed to be accountable to the standing committee, which has a legitimate mandate for oversight, or to the public which has a significant interest in and right to know what factors are influencing official languages policymaking and programming.
Another unfortunate outcome of the lack of response to the 2009 report is that it has strained the department’s relationship with the standing committee and overshadowed the fact that the department has done a lot of work and made a good deal of progress on official languages. The standing committee wants to emphasize that the criticism directed at the department in this report has more to do with the casual treatment of the standing committee’s role and mandate than with much
of the actual work being done by the department.
B. Nonetheless, the standing committee is deeply
troubled by the department’s apparent lack of concern for the fact that it is operating the Official Languages Board and the Aboriginal Languages Revitalization Board in contravention of its own legislation. The department has created a de-facto Aboriginal Languages Revitalization Board, similar to the one contemplated in the “Northwest Territories Aboriginal Languages Plan: A Shared Responsibility,” by tailoring the membership on the existing board to align with the “new approach.” This was done as a matter of expediency, which may have served the purpose of meeting immediate needs, but is not a defense against the need to ensure that the legislation is current. Given the fact that the FFT withdrew from the Official Languages Board in 2006, the department has had more than ample time to amend the legislation. The legislation should ultimately be dictating the structure and function of official languages program service and delivery, not the other way around.
C. Standing committee is also concerned about the
funding model for the delivery of Aboriginal language revitalization. The standing committee supports the aspirations of the language communities, but has concerns about accountability, particularly in the event that goals established by the language communities are not met within the funding provided. The standing committee will be looking to ensure that the department establishes an appropriate monitoring and accountability framework.
Mr. Speaker, I turn the report over to Mr. Nadli.