Mr. Speaker, I would like to share my time with my hon. colleague from Lakeland.
It has been a very interesting morning listening to the speeches, and I am happy to rise to discuss Bill C-91, an act respecting indigenous languages. I have had the opportunity to study the bill as a member of the heritage committee. I participated for many hours on that committee. I learned a lot from witnesses, and we heard some very thoughtful, insightful commentary on the bill's successes. We also heard about some possible shortcomings. I appreciate my colleague across the way referring to having the opportunity to speak to some of those challenges.
Before I do that, I need to talk about a play put on by the Siksika at Strathmore High School called New Blood Dance Show, a story of reconciliation. This is a phenomenal production that relates specifically to this topic.
It was in 2014 that the director of this play was inspired when she went camping with her sister at Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park. While she was there, she saw writings that are sacred to the Blackfoot people. They are recordings of their stories. She was sad to learn that when the Blackfoot people were moved onto the reservation in the late 1800s, they were not allowed to visit their writings and learn of their heritage. For 70 years, three generations were unable to learn their stories, and the translations were lost. The show is about learning these stories.
The director met with the chief of the Siksika at the time, Chief Vincent Old Woman, and he told her many stories about going to a residential school, the loss of language and the loss of heritage. From visiting those writings, she developed a play called New Blood. This is a phenomenal play put on by high school students, the majority of them Siksika. The play has been performed many times in southern Alberta and in British Columbia.
What they would really like to do, though, is come to Ottawa to put on that play. It is a play people need to see, and hopefully, if they keep applying for grants, they will be able to achieve that goal. I hope people here are able to see that production.
I believe that there has been some discussion about the rushed nature of this piece of legislation. The Liberals brought this forward at the end of three and half years, although they said years earlier that this was a critically important piece of legislation. Not only did they rush it to the point of just getting it through to start the process in the House, we were asked to do a pre-study before it was sent to committee.
We met daily, sometimes for many hours. The rushed nature of this legislation is probably the reason for the amendments and the ongoing challenges. It was problematic in the sense that members on the committee identified specific words that were going to create problems. When I first suggested that some of these words would be problematic, there were snickers on the other side.
When constitutional lawyers showed up as witnesses and started pointing out these same words as problematic, saying that this could end up in court, it became much more interesting to see the reaction. What was then problematic was that just minutes before we started clause-by-clause, the Liberals dropped many amendments on the table that were the exact concerns I had brought up. When I brought them up, they were snickered at, but when a constitutional lawyer brought them up, the Liberals paid attention, because they could see that this could cause problems and be tied up in court.
The Liberals referred to many amendments by the opposition being accepted. They were not our amendments. I do not remember, sitting on that committee hour after hour going through clause-by-clause, the amendments from the opposition being accepted. It has been said many times that they were accepted by the opposition. I do not remember that happening.
The Liberals have a piece of legislation, which we agree with and support, but we do not agree with the rushed nature of it. They talked about the extensive consultations they had. When we asked questions about the consultations, first they talked about doing them for six months. Then they said there was a three-month window. When it came down to it, they did consultations for just weeks. In committee, they said that it was down to weeks.
When we thought of the 600 different indigenous groups and sub-groups, such as the Métis and all the varieties of people out there, we began to understand that this consultation process was flawed. When we started to hear from witnesses that they had missed critical groups of people to talk to, we began to understand why the legislation was flawed. We began to understand why the legislation has problems and why witnesses were saying that the Liberals missed the mark.
We agree to support the legislation. The government said two years or three years ago that it was going to do it, but it should have started sooner and developed legislation that could have circumvented some of those flaws. Witnesses appeared who said that the bill had nothing to do with the Inuit. They were left out and not consulted. There are constitutional lawyers who are still concerned that the language, even as amended, could become tied up in court. That is the wrong place for legislation to go. If the government wants to get something done, it has to make the legislation better before it is passed. Although we agree with having it, the process left a lot to be desired.
I think of the people I have met from the Siksika Nation, the people who work in the education system. I see the immersion programs starting in Siksika. When I visit the schools or speak at their graduations, I hear how important their language is, but I hear that they are concerned that those who are younger than the elders but older than the youth are going to miss out. Immersion programs are starting in schools, but when the students go home, who are they going to speak to, because their parents do not know the language? The educators view this as a huge problem. They were never consulted on how to deal with that.
The school systems working with this are dedicated. They want it to work. Those school systems for Michif believe that the money is headed into bureaucracies. They believe it will not come down to where it is needed at the grassroots level. They do not believe that they were recognized as key components of this particular legislation. I agree with that. From my education background, I know of many types of government legislation that has been announced that at the school level has trickled down as pennies. The dollars went into bureaucracy.
Witnesses said that they believe that the money will go into national organizations. They do not believe that it will reach the schools, where it should be, because they were not consulted. There are many instances of people talking about languages disappearing or being at risk. If this money disappears into bureaucracy, it will not save those languages. That was a concern of the witnesses.
We will support this. However, we believe it was too rushed. There are challenges with it, and we wonder if it will get where it needs to.