Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Operational Changes

In addition to the development of an official languages policy, committee believes operational changes should be considered at the Legislative Assembly to improve the delivery of official language services. Since 2019, the Legislative Assembly has benefited from an increased budget related to official languages, such as:

• Interpretation services were extended from a two-hour period from the start of a sitting day to full-day coverage;
• Facilities were upgraded to allow the number of official languages being interpreted on a daily basis to be increased;
• Broadcasting in official languages other than English was increased;
• YouTube channels were created to share proceedings in interpreted official languages; and
• Some professional development for interpreters has been introduced.

Committee recognizes that, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, it is not currently possible to provide simultaneous interpretation of proceedings into all official languages due to the physical and technological limitations of the Legislative Assembly. Committee appreciates the ongoing efforts to provide simultaneous interpretation into the greatest possible number of official languages and encourages the Assembly to continue these efforts.

Following the pandemic, or when it is possible to overcome the current physical and technical limitations faced by the Assembly, committee encourages full simultaneous interpretation of House proceedings into all official languages where:

• interpretation is provided for the entire sitting day;
• a minimum of two interpreters should be scheduled to provide service in each official language, in keeping with best practices;
• to the greatest degree possible, the Assembly should hire interpreters from multiple communities to ensure that regional dialects of official languages are adequately represented in the Assembly; and
• efforts should be undertaken to identify on-call interpreters who are able to provide service on short notice if there is an unexpected cancellation.

As recommended in the Languages Commissioner's special report, this committee believes there would be value in recording statistics regarding the use of official languages in the Assembly. Further, committee believes these statistics should be incorporated into future annual reports of the Legislative Assembly. Statistics to be recorded may include:

• the number of translation and interpretation requests made by Members of the Legislative Assembly and turnaround time for this work;
• the number of Assembly documents translated into official languages;
• the number of committee meetings for which interpretation is provided;
• the number of hours of House proceedings interpreted into each official language as well as the total number of hours of interpreted proceedings; and
• the number of Ministers' and Members' statements made in an official language other than English.

Prior to the public hearing of November 17, 2020, committee distributed a stakeholder letter seeking input on this matter. Attached to this letter was an active offer to provide the letter in any official language. Committee believes that the Legislative Assembly should develop an active offer page, making use of the appropriate spelling of each language, and it should be included with the following documents:

• Votes and Proceedings;
• Rules of the Legislative Assembly;
• Code of Conduct for Members of the Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly;
• News releases;
• Annual reports and other reports of the Legislative Assembly; and
• Committee reports.

The active offer should also feature prominently on the Legislative Assembly website. In addition, committee believes the Legislative Assembly should strive to produce the Votes and Proceedings, the official record of the Assembly and Committee of the Whole, in all official languages.

During the public hearing, Mr. Batiste Foisy remarked on the inability of the Legislative Assembly to provide interpreted audio in a timely manner, which can impact the ability of non-English media in reporting on the proceedings of the Legislative Assembly. Committee understands that this shortcoming is, for the most part, due to limitations of the hardware currently in use. In the longer term, committee believes that the Legislative Assembly should consider the official languages requirements when upgrading audio and video equipment related to broadcasting, web streaming, and in-house audio systems.

Recommendation 7

The Standing Committee on Rules and Procedures recommends that the above suggestions be investigated by the Office of the Speaker, the Board of Management, and the Office of the Clerk in an effort to make immediate improvements in the provision of official languages services. Further, if any of these suggestions are found not be feasible at present, committee recommends that a plan to realize these outcomes be included in the official languages policy.

Mr. Speaker, I hand it over to our committee chair from Frame Lake. Thank you.