Thank you, Mr. O'Reilly. Would the Minister clarify?

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and as I said during the public hearing, the Department of Health and Social Services is not the expert on languages or fonts. Education, Culture and Employment certainly has a lot more of knowledge and awareness in this area. I do know that fonts are available. They exist in different formats and databases that are used across the Northwest Territories by different groups of bodies, and there are keyboards with different fonts on them. So, you know, I imagine fonts can be used in many, many different avenues other than just birth certificates. But for us, if someone's going to register their name and put it on a birth certificate we are open to using the traditional fonts, but other components like the date of their birth or their birth community, still have to be based on the official names and this does not require us to change official names as registered of communities.

Thank you, Minister. Mr. O'Reilly.

Mr. Chair, yes, look, I'm not asking the Minister to change official names of communities. What I'm wondering is if someone wants to get a birth certificate now, and they were born in Lutselk'e, and I'm not even going to say the name quite correctly, how does that appear on the birth certificate as their place of birth? Is it exclusively in Roman orthography right now or does it use the appropriate Denesuline fonts? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. O'Reilly. So you're asking if the legal name of a community uses non-Roman orthography, will that non-Roman orthography appear on the birth certificate if that is the official legal name. Minister Abernethy, yes or no?

Once this passes and comes into effect, we'll be able to put any of the supported or any of the information in the appropriate fonts. If the registered name of community does not include a font, it will not include it on the birth certificate.

Thank you, Minister. Mr. O'Reilly.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Yes, I think we're getting to the bottom of this. So we don’t have the ability now to issue a birth certificate with the official names on it if they include non-Roman orthography fonts? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. O'Reilly. Minister. That is what the Minister just stated. Would the Minister like to clarify that?

Birth certificates today do not include anything other than the Roman fonts.

Thank you, Minister. Mr. O'Reilly.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Does the Minister of staff know how long it's going to take then to have the ability to do that for the official name portion of the birth certificate? Presumably it's going to happen at the same time that we fix this up for the names that can go on the birth certificate. I was just wondering when this is going to take place, when we can make this shift. Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. O'Reilly. Minister.

Just to be clear, we will put the legal registered name of a community on birth certificates, so if it has font we'll make sure that happens. If it does not have font in the legal registered name then it won't obviously. Going live on this particular component of this legislation, we talked about this at length at the hearing. There is a significant amount of work that needs to be done in order to make sure that we are not putting residents of the Northwest Territories in harm's way by limiting their ability to get passports, social insurance numbers. Also eliminating their ability to travel anywhere. Once we move and move this into effect and someone uses traditional fonts on their local driver's licence, it will limit their ability to travel within Canada. So there's a significant amount of work that we have to do in order to create transliteration guides and other work that will ensure that when someone presents with a birth certificate from the Northwest Territories, they're other legal documents like passports can include a Roman alphabet interpretation in that is legal.

So we anticipate it's going to take us quite a bit of time to finish negotiations with the Government of Canada, work with Education, Culture and Employment to bring this component to reality.

Thank you, Minister. I'd just like to remind the Minister, when you're done speaking please conclude with a thank you, just so the sound techs know to switch the microphones. Thank you. Mr. O'Reilly.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the response from the Minister. So just in case anybody comes away with the wrong impression, I strongly support these changes to the Vital Statistics Act, and I appreciate the efforts of the Minister and his staff to do this. I just want to make sure that we're going to be able to do it in terms of the official names as well. I'm a very strong advocate for Aboriginal languages, all official languages, and I do appreciate the work of the department and look forward to having this sorted out soon. Thanks.

Thank you very much, Mr. O'Reilly. Next, Mr. Nadli.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I speak in favour of Bill 5, the Vital Statistics Act, more particularly for the Aboriginal languages, an opportunity for people that make a choice to formally register their Aboriginal names. I applaud the department for taking those steps. Particularly so for the young individual person that took the steps to ensure that this legislation was amended. I'd like to draw her name, Shene Catholique-Valpy that took the steps to try to, you know, have her children's traditional name recognized in vital statistics, and she couldn't do it. So this is her effort in terms of making changes to legislation. It opens the door in terms of First Nations taking the steps and choice to register their traditional names.

At the same time, you know, it also sets the stage for self-identity of First Nations people. You know, the irony of our existence in North America and the world stage is that we all have Anglicized names and Christian names. Our culture is not really reflected in our English names. So this provides an opportunity for people to distinguish themselves as First Nations and Indigenous First Nations around the world.

I understand this passage of this legislation is still not complete, there's still an exercise in terms of sorting how, you know, the technical aspect of registering your names would work. But it's a small step through reconciliation. We still have a long ways to go. Hopefully, this is not just lip service, that it will indeed be committing this department, along with other departments in this government, to provide that opportunity for people to ensure that, you know, they're recognized in their formal traditional names in their self-identity. So with that, I just wanted to speak in favour of this legislation. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Nadli. Would the Minister like to make any response?

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I appreciate the Member's comments. I just want to be clear that this is not lip service, this demonstrates our commitment to making this a reality and making this happen. With respect to change of sex designation, gender, we believe that we will be able to do the work necessary to put this into effect by April of 2017. The same is true for single names, we believe that we should be able to get the work done through regulations and others to make it official and effective in April, 2017.

Implementing Aboriginal fonts is not as simple. The department has been reaching out to the federal government over the past year about the use of Aboriginal fonts here in the Northwest Territories. Unfortunately, we were really only able to have some successful discussions as of September. To be clear, having this bill drafted and passed, in my opinion, speaks to our commitment to making this happen. Unfortunately, it will take some time. If we implement the use of Aboriginal fonts today, those residents who choose to use Aboriginal fonts on their birth certificate would be at a real disadvantage. This is the first jurisdiction in the country to do this. Granted, we are only one of two jurisdictions that recognizes languages other than English and/or French.

To make this happen, we have to do a significant amount of technical work to have these fonts recognized in electronic systems used in the Northwest Territories, in Canada, and essentially around the world. Those systems are used in social insurance numbers, passports, healthcare cards, other documents, to name just a few. If we don't do the work and we move ahead with the fonts before the work is done, our residents who utilize the fonts won't be able to get passports, they won't be able to get social insurance numbers. They won't even be able to travel outside of the Northwest Territories with a driver's licence because those driver's licences will not be consistent with the name on a boarding pass. We've all been there; they look at our driver's licence, they look at the boarding pass, if the names aren't the same, you don't get on the plane, and other jurisdictions aren't going to have our fonts.

So the work needs to be done on the transliteration guides. We also have to look at a number of databases and other programs we're using in the Northwest Territories. We anticipate there's as many as 400 databases being used by the government alone that will have to have the fonts incorporated. So it is a significant amount of work, we have nine official languages, other than French and English, that we have to incorporate into this, and we need the federal government to be supportive.

So we are committed, the department is already starting the work, they've already been in touch with Education, Culture and Employment, they've already been in touch with the feds. I'd love to say we can make this happen tomorrow, I really would, but the reality is it's going to take some time. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister. I want to thank all the Members for their comments as well. Seeing no further general comments, does committee agree that we proceed to a clause-by-clause review of the bill?

Thank you, committee. I will call out the number of each clause, committee can respond with an agreed if they agree and, if there are questions or comments, please raise your hand and let it be known.

We will defer the bill number and title until after the consideration of the clauses, so please turn to page 1 of the bill. Clause 1.

---Clauses 1 through 12 inclusive approved

Committee, to the bill as a whole, does committee agree that Bill 5, An Act to Amend the Vital Statistics Act, is now ready for third reading?