Bill C-91 (Historical)

Indigenous Languages Act

An Act respecting Indigenous languages

This enactment provides, among other things, that
(a) the Government of Canada recognizes that the rights of Indigenous peoples recognized and affirmed by section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 include rights related to Indigenous languages;
(b) the Minister of Canadian Heritage may enter into different types of agreements or arrangements in respect of Indigenous languages with Indigenous governments or other Indigenous governing bodies or Indigenous organizations, taking into account the unique circumstances and needs of Indigenous groups, communities and peoples; and
(c) federal institutions may cause documents to be translated into an Indigenous language or provide interpretation services to facilitate the use of an Indigenous language.
The enactment also establishes the Office of the Commissioner of Indigenous Languages and sets out its composition. The Office’s mandate and powers, duties and functions include
(a) supporting the efforts of Indigenous peoples to reclaim, revitalize, maintain and strengthen Indigenous languages;
(b) promoting public awareness of, among other things, the richness and diversity of Indigenous languages;
(c) undertaking research or studies in respect of the provision of funding for the purposes of supporting Indigenous languages and in respect of the use of Indigenous languages in Canada;
(d) providing services, including mediation or other culturally appropriate services, to facilitate the resolution of disputes; and
(e) submitting to the Minister of Canadian Heritage an annual report on, among other things, the use and vitality of Indigenous languages in Canada and the adequacy of funding provided by the Government of Canada for initiatives related to Indigenous languages.

Indigenous Languages Act

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Madam Speaker, that is a fantastic question and I thank the member opposite for that. I hope some of the ideas and suggestions on how we can do that will come out in committee.

In Edmonton there is a lady who is a trustee on the Catholic School Board, Debbie Engel. If Debbie is watching, I am giving her a shout-out. She has helped start a fantastic program through the Catholic school system, where they introduced a mentoring program for first nations students to keep young indigenous people in school. They have also tried to get funding for programs that will actually teach indigenous languages.

The member has an excellent suggestion. I hope we will reach out to the various public and private school systems throughout the country, and invite them in as witnesses so they can testify and give information on how we can make Bill C-91 a success.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Madam Speaker, my answer is absolutely not, and what a ridiculous question.

The issue we are discussing today is Bill C-91, but it does tie in to all the failures of the government. It has stated repeatedly that no relationship is more important than its relationship with first nations, but we have seen, time and time again, that it has tabled documents in this Parliament that contradict everything it says.

The Liberal government lives, breathes and eats hypocrisy. This is another example. I just hope it will take Bill C-91 seriously and work with the people on this side of the House to send it to committee and actually accomplish something for first nations for a change, instead of just standing here making empty promises and empty announcements.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-91, an act respecting indigenous languages. We, of course, support the bill and support sending it to the heritage committee after it gets through the House.

I want to thank all the speakers today. There were a lot of well-thought-out comments on the bill.

We believe that the bill before us is both pragmatic and reasonable. My colleague from Bow River said that “the Government of Canada was part of the destruction of indigenous languages and we need to be part of the solution.” Hopefully, Bill C-91 will be a step toward that.

The Right Hon. Stephen Harper said in his June 11 residential school apology that:

First Nations, Inuit and Métis languages and cultural practices were prohibited in these schools....

The government now recognizes that the consequences of the Indian Residential Schools policy were profoundly negative and that this policy has had a lasting and damaging impact.

That is very true.

The legislation before us was first promised in 2016, so I have to ask, as has been asked by previous speakers, why the delay? Why is it so late in this session that it is finally introduced? We have just 13 more sitting weeks before we break for the summer and the election. Although, I am sure that there will be hopes otherwise, there appears to be very little chance that the bill will actually become law before the House rises.

Over a year ago, the government seemed to place a higher priority on other bills instead of this one, and I will give the example of Bill C-24, which was called the Seinfeld bill about nothing. What was Bill C-24? Basically it was to codify the name change from Public Works to Public Services and Procurement, and also to change the accounting within the appropriations on how we pay the old ministers of state. That is it.

I have to ask, if no relationship is more important to the government, why was a bill codifying a name change of a ministry more important than bringing this bill forward? This issue encapsulates the lie about the government's claim of no relationship being more important.

I will talk about the issue of safe drinking water on reserves. The government has promised to eliminate the drinking advisories by 2021, which is fantastic and we support that. However, government members stand time and time again in the House and say how far they have come, and that they have take so many off, but they never mention the fact that for every two they have taken off since coming to power, one has been added.

In fact, it was even on its June website that 62 had been lifted but 33 had been added. If we go to the website today, we will see that it has actually taken off that portion of how many water advisories have been added. I have to ask, as the government members stand up again and again touting their success, why have they taken this off the website? What are they are trying to hide?

On the fiscal transparency issue, one of the first things the government did was lift the law for first nations to have fiscal transparency for their members. If we go to the government's departmental plan for Indigenous Services, which is the plan the government has to fill out, publish and table in the House and that the minister herself signs off on, one of its goals states that it is going to reduce the number of first nations complying with the First Nations Financial Transparency Act. Literally, the goal that is stated right in the departmental plan is to reduce the number of first nation bands complying with the transparency act by 23%. Now, I have to give the government points, as it actually succeeded partly on that. The departmental results plans that were just published show it reduced it by 8%.

The Auditor General Michael Ferguson who recently passed away, in his 2018 report, commented about the government splitting Indigenous Services and Northern Affairs. He stated that splitting the department into two different departments could be a step forward toward improving services for first nations, but that we won't know unless there's a way to track outcomes.

This goes back to the departmental plans. The departmental plans tabled in the House show what the government's priorities are, where it will be spending the money and what its planned outcomes and targets are going to be for the money spent and the actions for the year. In Indigenous Services, 50% of the targets set are to be determined.

In his report, the late Michael Ferguson stated that if we want to move forward in serving first nations, we need to see planned outcomes, but the government's response is to table a report where 50% of the goals for Indigenous Services for the year, their targets, their planned outcomes, are left blank. As well, 55% of the dates in their planned outcomes are left to be determined and 61% of the previous year's results are left as not applicable. Here is the government, again, with no relationship more important, stating the goals for Indigenous Services but that the government is not going to say what it did last year for comparison.

Again, I bring my colleagues back to what the late Michael Ferguson said, which was that we are not going to get better services unless we can judge the outcomes.

Remember that 50% did not have any targets at all. When they did set them, 21% of the targets show a decline or no improvement over the previous year. How are we going to move forward and help improve indigenous services when the government, for half of the Department of Indigenous Services, says it will not set a goal, and when it does set a goal, fully 21% show a decline from previous years?

For Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs, one-quarter of their departmental plans show no goals for this year and 92% would not state what it was the previous year. Again, we have nothing to compare it with. I am going to give colleagues a couple of examples.

For the percentage of on-reserve, department-funded first nation drinking water systems meeting required standards, there was no improvement over three years. The government is planning to spend, I think, $1.2 billion in the budget. There was $400 million in the Liberal slush fund of vote 40, but their own plan shows it will not improve.

For the percentage of on-reserve, department-funded first nation wastewater systems being treated according to guidelines, there was about a 20% decrease from the previous government.

For the percentage of first nations living on reserves and reporting being in excellent health, there is a decline from the previous government.

Here is a great one, the percentage of DPC requests, which are predetermination requests for dental services, that are handled within the required service standards. Remember this is the government that spent $32,000 on legal bills to fight a first nations teenager from Alberta who needed dental work. The government's goal was to have 95% solved within the predetermined guidelines. Do members know what the government achieved last year? It was zero, not one. The government has time to sue people and time to fight a teenager in court but it cannot even accomplish its own goals.

The percentage of increase of indigenous businesses includes the money that is set aside for government procurements. It has dropped since the previous government.

We have heard from the NDP and others that there is a mould crisis in indigenous housing. In budget 2017, the government set aside $20 million a year for indigenous northern housing. Do members know what the government set aside for Tesla charging stations for rich millionaires, like the Minister of Finance or the Prime Minister? It set aside $30 million a year. Thus, we are putting more aside for Tesla charging stations than the money to handle the crisis in first nations housing.

Again, I support Bill C-91. It is a great step forward but we have to do what the late Michael Ferguson stated. We have to set up a system where we can actually hold the government to account for its promises to deliver services to the first nations.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to stand today in this place and add my voice to the discussion around Bill C-91.

The House may not be aware that today is End It Movement Day. It is a movement to end modern-day slavery in our country and around the world. The people who participate wear a red X on their hand. Many may not know that within Canada, human trafficking probably happens within 10 blocks of where they live if they live in the city and within 10 miles of where they live if they live in the country.

Modern-day slavery has many faces in Canada, but the vast majority of cases, about 50% of them, involve indigenous women and girls. That is why I am wearing a red X on my hand today.

Bill C-91 is about respect and about protecting indigenous languages here in Canada. Many bills have been brought up about this issue, and the government has spoken in length about it as well.

Back in December 2016, the government said it was seized with this issue and would table some legislation. Now, at the eleventh hour of this Parliament, the government has tabled a bill, and here we are, discussing it today.

I find it frustrating to see the government's approach to supporting something. Supply management is a good example. It says all the time that it supports supply management, but it has very narrowly cast that support. The support is purely for the two words, “supply management”. It is the same in this case as well. The government says it supports indigenous languages, but that is really just the two words, “indigenous languages”.

Many times when we support something, the actual thing that needs to be supported needs the entire surrounding infrastructure or the surrounding society to support it. Only supporting the end result does not necessarily help the actual goal we are trying to achieve.

Let us use the case of supply management as an example. It is really great for the government to say it supports supply management, but when it takes milk and dairy products and animal proteins out of the food guide, it is not supporting supply management whatsoever.

A couple of people who work in my office are coffee connoisseurs. They always ask me why I put cream in my coffee. They think I am ruining the coffee by doing so. I tell them I support supply management, so I put cream in my coffee. Supporting supply management means actually supporting supply management and targeting the actual issue.

We are seeing that again with this indigenous language bill. It says we are going to support indigenous language and we are going to have an ombudsman and all of these things, but if we do not support communities and do not support the culture of these languages, they will become dead languages.

I know a bit about dead languages. I know a bit of Latin. It is a language that is used all the time, but it is not a spoken language. There are records of languages that have been brought back. I understand Hebrew is one of those languages that has been brought back from being a dead language to a language that is now alive and well.

I failed to mention at the beginning of my comments that I will be sharing my time with the member for Edmonton West.

This is a great bill. I am sure that we will take the language, codify it and keep a record of it. Many organizations around this country are working on translating the Bible into all indigenous languages.

The House may be aware that both the German language and the English language were codified when the Bible was translated into those languages. There is a language known as High German. It was not really a language spoken by anybody, but it was the language that the Bible would have been translated into for a big swath of the world that spoke Germanic languages. It codified the whole language into a common language.

We are seeing work being done on that around the country. The funding that will be coming through this legislation will probably support many of those initiatives. I support that idea.

The point I am trying to make is that we would like these languages to be living languages, not dead languages, and in order to do that, we need to support communities. What does supporting communities look like? For one thing, we have a rich heritage in this country around the fur trade. Canada was built on the fur trade. I always say Canada was built on a number of things, such as the fur trade, the railway and other things, but the fur trade for indigenous peoples was a major part of the economy. It is a shame that today we do not champion the fur trade in this country.

Representatives of the fur trade association were in my office the other day, and they told me that fur will not even be on the winter Olympics uniforms. I do not know if anyone saw that Canada Goose recently came out with a new lineup of jackets designed by an Inuit designer. They are amazing jackets. They have nice fur on the hood. I am sure there are more fur products on the inside as well, though I could not see. The fur trade is what made these communities sustainable. Their languages were able to survive with or without government funding, and the Inuit are a prime example of that. Most them still have their languages because it is a vibrant community.

Where I am from, many of the Woodland Cree people still speak the language, and their communities are thriving. Why are they thriving? It is because the economy is thriving. No doubt a generation has lost the language due to the residential schools, but when communities come together and operate well, the language continues to thrive, so we see that bills like Bill C-69 do nothing. We say we want to support languages and indigenous communities, but then the government introduces a bill like Bill C-69, which hamstrings all of the northern Alberta communities that rely on the economy that pipelines, the oil patch and resource development bring to northern Alberta. The government says it supports indigenous languages, but it supports them in a very narrow way. We need to ensure these communities have a good economy; then the language will flourish.

Another area that is frustrating to me is the language around firearms that the Liberals in particular use all the time. They seem to be very suspicious of people who own and use firearms on a regular basis. It is our indigenous communities that use, own and work with firearms on a regular basis. The language and laws coming from the Liberal government, particularly Bill C-71, are onerous to all first nation communities for sure. Firearms are a big part of their culture. Firearms are a way of life for them, so to say we are going to support their languages and culture and then make it more onerous to own a firearm is not supportive of the culture whatsoever.

Lots of people say we already have languages and ask me why I think it is so important. We all have a world view, a narrative, a place that we belong in the world, and being part of a culture that has identifiable languages and creeds and those kinds of things gives us our sense of belonging in the world. A language does that to a large degree. Studies bear out the idea that when people feel they are tied to a language, a people, a land and a culture, they are much more successful in nation building and culture building.

For all of those reasons, I support this bill, but I find it ironic that we are here at the eleventh hour debating a bill to support indigenous languages.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Madam Speaker, Bill C-91 will be a historic move toward healing and rebuilding of our indigenous identities and pride across Canada. We as a nation made a mistake in our actions on residential schools and the forcing of young aboriginal youth to speak only English. We now can make right what we made wrong.

There are 13 weeks left in this session. Do you commit to working co-operatively with the opposition parties to get this done?

[Yvonne Jones, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Intergovernmental and Northern Affairs and Internal Trade, Lib.]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to stand today and speak on the ancestral lands of the Algonquin Anishinabeg people. I know that if Algonquin Elder Commanda were here today, as she was on the day when she opened our new chamber, she, too, would be happy to speak to a bill that speaks to preserving the languages of Canada's indigenous people. Many indigenous people across Canada are happy to see it.

In my own language, the language of my ancestors, the Inuit language, Inuktitut, I say nakurmiik or “thank you” for allowing me the opportunity to serve in this place and to speak to the bill today, and to speak in strong support of it.

Bill C-91 , the indigenous languages act, is aimed at supporting indigenous people all across our country and for doing what they have been trying to do for a long time in the absence of government, which is continuing to carry forward the language and culture they had been accustomed to and were born into.

In particular, it is appropriate that we are providing this language bill in Canada at this time, simply because it is the year of languages for the United Nations. If we go back in time and look to see when people started advocating for the bill, it was in 1995.

In 1995, Canada was moving in that direction. UNESCO had found that many languages within the world were disappearing. Canada, like other nations around the world, was called upon to preserve language and to preserve the language of indigenous people in particular.

Over that period of time, very little attention was being paid to what was happening. In fact, no action was taken whatsoever.

Also in 1995, the royal commission called upon Canada to begin working, right away, with indigenous people across the country; to start revitalizing language; to start establishing a foundation on which we could support indigenous efforts that were already taking place to preserve language within the country. However, no action was taken.

A colleague across the House asked why it took so long to get where we were. It is a question best asked to that side. In 2005, there was an indigenous-led task force on aboriginal languages. It recommended, very clearly, to the Conservative government of the day that it include initiatives to do just that. It would include legislation, such as what we have brought forward today, that recognized the Constitutional status of indigenous languages in the country, that would be funded, that official languages would also have a national council to coordinate their efforts and that a full strategy be designed, whose only goal was to ensure that indigenous language was revitalized and carried on in the country.

It is 25 years since the time those things happened. Nevertheless, we are here today. We are here because we have listened to what indigenous people have said to us. They have said quite clearly that the Government of Canada needs to do more to preserve indigenous languages in our country.

Over the last two years, in particular, we worked very hard with indigenous groups, first nations, Inuit and Métis, to ensure we would get this right, that we would bring to the House of Commons the very first bill to preserve indigenous languages in Canada and do those things that they had asked. I am very proud today to be part of a government that is acting and doing just that.

I think my colleague from the Northwest Territories probably said it best when he talked about why the languages of indigenous peoples had disappeared over the years.

I come from a region of the country where we are very proud of our indigenous and northern roots. In Labrador, we have two very distinct indigenous languages, Inuktitut and Innu-aimun. A lot of work has been done on preserving those languages, by communities, by the people who live there, by the elders, by generations of people. Over the last couple of years, we have been able to help them by investing in the tools they need, by investing in preserving the language within their schools and after school programs and by helping them prepare the products they need to continue to teach and carry on in that way. It is very difficult.

The area I come from, while I grew up not knowing the language of my ancestors, many others grew up in communities where people continued to speak the language on a very small scale. However, there are huge generational gaps between those who speak it as their mother tongue and those who are just starting to learn the language again. The gap is under 14 and over 65. That is basically where we see the language gap in most of the indigenous languages in my region. In other parts of the country, people do not even have that. Even that has disappeared. Therefore, so many people out there are really starting with the basics.

They lost their language as a result of assimilation and the residential schools, which we have talked about and have heard about in that unfortunate chapter of history that affected so many indigenous people. They lost their language because they were never permitted to speak it, as my colleague from the Northwest Territories said. That opportunity was removed from them, and not throughout just one or two decades but throughout many decades of our history.

Canada will never allow that to happen again. That is why we support bills like Bill C-91 before us today to ensure it does not happen again.

When we look back, we know that three times over the past 25 years the issue has come to the attention of government at certain points in time without action. The last call was through truth and reconciliation. When the prime minister of the day made his commitment on behalf of the government and to all Canadians that we would honour the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, this was one of the very things he committed to do.

I am really pleased that we are able to bring this legislation forward. I am also pleased that in so many regions in the country, many people still speak their mother tongue, like the people of Nunavut. Of over 33,000 people in that territory, most still speak their mother tongue, their language of Inuktitut. They are an example for all of us to live up to. However, we also know it will take early intervention and support to make this happen.

Today, as I conclude my comments, I want to thank all of those who had a hand in making this happen. I want to thank all indigenous people in Canada for not giving up and having the resilience to carry on. I want to acknowledge that this is certainly a great step forward in what has been a long journey for indigenous people.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Labrador.

First of all, I want to say mahsi cho.

Today is a great day. It is with great pleasure that I rise to speak in support of Bill C-91, the indigenous languages act. This legislation supports a revitalization of indigenous languages, which have deteriorated over the years because of the racist and discriminatory policies of successive governments.

Three languages were spoken in my home when I grew up: English; the language of the Dene, the Dehcho Dene; and the language of the Métis, Métis French, Michif. It all kind of came to an end when I started school, because during that era, we were not allowed to speak anything except English. If we were caught or reported for speaking anything but English, we were strapped with an 18-inch, three-inch wide rubber strap.

There was no defence. We were guilty. It did not matter if we did it or not. A lot of my colleagues would sometimes falsely report their fellow students. They wanted to see them get strapped. There was no way to get away from it. If the principal came out, grabbed us and brought us to the front of the class, and we fought back, he would hit us wherever he could. However, if we let him, he would just strap us on the hands. Usually it was four straps per hand. The only time we could get him to stop was if he drew blood. A lot of my colleagues would take a piece of their hair and put it on their hands to see if they could get their hands to bleed so that after the first strap, they would not be hit anymore.

Why did this happen? Why did we have to go through this? It is because past policies were designed to strip away indigenous identity and discourage the use of traditional languages.

This bill is intended to support and promote the use of indigenous languages. It recognizes that languages are fundamental to the identities, cultures, spiritual beliefs, relationships to the land, world views and self-determination of indigenous peoples.

Throughout the government-led engagement sessions on this legislation, which I think took a total of two years, it was stated that language was integral to who one is as a person, to who we are as a people and to individual and collective pride and strength.

Indigenous youth across Canada need to be exposed to their histories through language and must be supported in their efforts to learn their languages and have pride in their cultures. If they park their languages to survive, they also park a big part of their culture, which is something I have learned from my experience.

Acknowledging the importance of indigenous languages in Canada will allow for healthier indigenous people and communities and a healthier country as a whole.

There have been many studies done on the use of indigenous languages and their role, or lack of a role, in the issue of suicide. Many studies have shown that indigenous communities in which a majority of members report conversational knowledge of an indigenous language also experience low to absent youth suicide rates. By contrast, in those communities in which fewer than half the members report knowledge of the language, suicide rates are up to six times higher.

The Assembly of First Nations' report on its national engagement sessions regarding this act states:

Language learning and identity reunification can be sources of healing. Schooling—residential schools, day schools, public schools, technical schools—were sources of disrupting Indigenous language use as a natural process. These institutions made us ashamed to speak our languages and parents were made to believe that their languages would harm their children and keep them from succeeding. Language revitalization can be used to help mitigate other issues such as addictions; people with a strong sense of language have better physical and mental health.

Past studies and reports have acknowledged the importance of youth and intergenerational learning to the revitalization of indigenous languages.

The 2005 report “Towards a New Beginning" by the Task Force on Aboriginal Languages and Cultures calls for funding for immersion programs for children and youth. The task force report reminded indigenous communities to be more mindful of children and youth by stating:

Go home to your communities and do not forget the youth. They sometimes get forgotten and shouldn’t be. They’re important and they’re the next generation. We need to ask the youth what they need and want, and get them involved and get them excited about this.

I have heard chiefs in my riding talk about encouraging people to talk to youth and talk to their children, to say one word or one sentence in their indigenous language, because it does not cost anything.

In the report, elders urge educational institutions to encourage youth to take leadership roles in language preservation. It is important to recognize that youth need access to sufficient financial support to assist in their language journeys so they can learn, use and promote their languages.

Through this bill, the Government of Canada has committed to supporting the efforts of indigenous people to reclaim, revitalize, preserve and maintain their languages in a variety of ways, including by implementing measures that would facilitate the allocation of funding.

A recent report published by the First Peoples' Cultural Council, entitled “Indigenous Languages Recognition, Preservation and Revitalization”, stated:

Youth energy is a driving force for language revitalization. It needs to be encouraged.

Young people need to be encouraged to take control over their languages, as they are the future of this country and will be responsible for the future of indigenous languages.

In 2016, Canada officially adopted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which proclaims:

Indigenous peoples have the right to revitalize, use, develop and transmit to future generations, their histories, languages, oral traditions, philosophies, writing systems and literatures, and to designate and retain their own names for communities, places and persons.

The declaration also asserts:

States shall, in conjunction with indigenous peoples, take effective measures, in order for indigenous individuals, particularly children, including those living outside their communities, to have access, when possible, to an education in their own culture and provided in their own language.

The bill recognizes the urgent need to support the efforts of indigenous people to reclaim, revitalize, maintain and also strengthen their languages. Indigenous youth and all peoples in Canada need to be supported in their efforts to reclaim their languages. Indigenous communities have been working diligently to revitalize and reclaim their first nations, Inuit and Métis languages, and it is important to acknowledge their work. The role of elders and language keepers is also very important to the languages of indigenous people in Canada, and their efforts should not be overlooked.

This legislation must be implemented with urgency to provide the necessary support for indigenous people before the language keepers are gone. I urge all hon. members to respect and honour the energy and perseverance of indigenous youth by acting swiftly to adopt this legislation.

I will conclude by reminding members that this bill is long overdue. We must continue to recognize the importance of indigenous language revitalization and the invaluable effects it has on indigenous youth, indigenous communities and Canadians. We have to hurry, because many of our indigenous languages depend on it.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I rise today to speak to Bill C-91.

We are in the last stages of this Parliament. It may seem like the election is far off in October of this year, but legislation being introduced right now is on the clock, as we say. It is not unusual for even government bills to take more than a year to pass.

This legislation on indigenous languages was promised by the Liberal government three years ago. It was promised to be introduced last year. It was introduced just this week, and it is going to take a certain determined effort and a willingness, maybe a newfound willingness, on the part of the government to negotiate and make accommodations. While the bill is a good first step towards protecting indigenous languages in Canada, there are some significant and real opportunities the government missed in designing it.

The Prime Minister talks often, certainly more than any previous one, of the need for reconciliation in this country. I would say it is an inconsistent message on the ground, because many of the indigenous people I represent in northwestern British Columbia have heard the words but not seen actions that have taken us along that way.

For many years since coming to office, I have argued for support for indigenous languages and for the proper, stable funding of language programs. Much as we worry about the rare and beautiful species around the world that are becoming extinct or endangered, we are watching ancient and profound languages disappearing before our very eyes, within our lifetime, here in Canada. I have heard ministers talk about this as a crisis many times, yet we do not treat it like a crisis.

Let me start with the good, because it is important to try to give credit where it is due. While the bill is late and has yet to specify funding, the fact that we are now speaking about indigenous languages is something important and needs to be sustained.

We have a piece of legislation that is not necessarily very large but could potentially have a profound impact. It would perhaps allow for stable funding. The reason that is important, as anyone who has tried to acquire a second or third language would know, is that taking a week's course is insufficient. Taking a week's course once a year or every few years is not going to be enough.

What gives a person the capacity to speak with the range required to truly understand and incorporate a language is sustained effort over time, having instruction, and having materials there from the earliest stages of life right through. Learning to express oneself in one's own language in a proper way requires that kind of sustained effort.

While we see statutory funding made available in this legislation, there is no amount indicated. All the legislation points to in clause 7 is that consultations will be undertaken with indigenous groups to establish funding. One has to wonder what the government has been doing over the last three years.

The Liberals have talked about consultation a lot, and we would have assumed that there was a figure attached to this. We have a budget coming in a short while, but Canadians familiar with politics would know that budgets that are introduced in an election year are sometimes worth the paper they are written on, but not always.

The government has grown an addiction to what is called back-loaded funding. It announces a large number. Housing or transportation would be good examples where the number is large but it happens in the eighth, ninth or 10th year of the program. If anyone can predict what the government is going to look like, much less the budget, 10 years from now, I sure would like to talk to that person about the stock market and Vegas.

It cannot be done. These are promises that cannot be committed to. While statutory funding is outlined in the bill, no figure is given by the government even though we have asked several times.

It is frustrating, because that is not treating a thing like a crisis. When the Liberals say they want to consult after being in power for more than three and a half years, indigenous groups and leaders and maternal language speakers will ask what exactly the Liberals have been doing and why it has taken so long.

I need to talk about home a bit, because this is how I can relate to this type of legislation.

In the northwest of British Columbia are some of the most ancient and vibrant indigenous cultures: the Tahltan and Taku River Tlingit in the north, up to the now Yukon border; the Haida and Haida Gwaii down the Tsimshian coast to Bella Coola and Bella Bella, the Nuxalk, all the way up through the interior to the Carrier Sekani, Wet'suwet'en, the Haisla, Tsimshian, Wet'suwet'en, Gitxsan and others.

These languages are something to behold. When I am attending and observing a traditional ceremony in the feast hall, from naming ceremonies and weddings to funerals, smoke feasts and headstone feasts, I am reminded that central to any culture, and in particular indigenous culture, is the ability of a community or a nation to speak its own language to itself in those important moments in life: the passing on of an elder, the naming of young people or a chief acquiring her or his name. It is the ability to tell the stories and the ability to describe the meanings behind the words and locations.

I think of the court case that is often referred to in this place. The case of Delgamuukw and Gisday’wa took place at the Supreme Court of Canada, just a few blocks from here, when two chiefs of the Gitxsan and the Wet'suwet'en, appeared before court day after day to establish an important thing in our law and precedents, that oral tradition and oral evidence counted as evidence.

One of the great corruptions of colonial empires was to dismiss any legal authority of indigenous peoples in order to acquire the land, terra nullius, to say that there was nobody here and that anything that had existed in law here, in some cases for thousands upon thousands of years, was somehow done away with.

At the Supreme Court, the challenge was for the Wet'suwet'en and Gitxsan chiefs to be able to describe in their languages, in Wet'suwet'en and in Gitxsan, the place names and histories and stories of their nations. By doing it consistently and over and over again under brutal cross-examination by the Crown, that case was successful. Because they were speakers of their traditional languages in their original form, they were able to establish in front of the highest court in the land their territorial rights and the ability to have some influence over what happens in their homes. That is the most basic concept of human rights we have.

Unfortunately, this is where I struggle with the current government, and I think many indigenous peoples do as well. If we look to the Wet'suwet'en and what is going on right now on their territory and the Unist'ot'en territories, there is a challenge and debate, with conflict from time to time, over a proposed pipeline. One of the things we are trying to establish with the government is that very ability to have some say over the land. We have called upon the Prime Minister and the government just to be involved in what is happening in the Wet'suwet'en territory. From the Prime Minister's Office on down to the indigenous affairs minister, we have been told it is not our business.

On the one hand, Liberals claim reconciliation as a priority. The Prime Minister often says there is no more important relationship than that with indigenous peoples. When there is a moment of conflict, we are able to engage the municipality; we are able to engage the police and we are able to engage with the company and the provincial government, but we cannot engage with the federal government under acts that exist that were created in this place.

The government suddenly wants to wash its hands of any implication and say it believes in reconciliation, except when we need reconciliation, when we need to reconcile things like the Indian Act and the hereditary governance system of the Wet'suwet'en. This would be an important thing to the government if it cared about reconciliation. Let us reconcile.

My family heritage is Irish. I was the first in my family to be born here after they immigrated, back in the 1950s. When I look through the Irish history, particularly the colonial history of Great Britain in Ireland, one of the tactics used by the colonial power was to extinguish language, to extinguish stories and history and where people come from, because if we cannot tell our stories, we do not know who we are. It is an attempt to erase a people. To truly subjugate them requires the colonial power, in this case, to try to remove their history and language.

We saw it in Ireland over centuries, and the British picked up that model and applied it when they were the colonial power in this country, to eliminate the language, stories and history. The settlers could pretend that there were no people here. There was no land taken because it was not in possession of anybody, as they were nomadic people without laws, traditions, language or culture.

Through the residential schools and the sixties scoop, which is not mentioned in the bill, and other oppressive tactics designed in parliaments, in this place, explicitly by successive prime ministers, they tried to extinguish indigenous people entirely and subsume them into the colonial melting pot. We can only imagine the courage and energy required from those indigenous elders to insist, even though it was against the law of the day, on speaking their language.

I was recently at a funeral where an elder was relaying stories of what it was like for him to go to school and the beatings he took any time he spoke Gitxsan. If the teacher, the nun in this case, heard the Gitxsan language spoken at any time, in excitement, in sorrow, in explanation to another student, he would be beaten.

This was a story my grandmother was able to tell from her Irish past. If she spoke Celtic in front of the British nuns, she was beaten as well. Therefore, across oceans and across time, we are able to see the influences. Now my family speaks hardly any Celtic at all, and I wonder what that robs me of as a son of the Irish, that I am unable to access my history, culture and traditions because of decisions made by the mother of parliaments in London.

Much like it is with species, once extinct there is no going back. When I look around at the indigenous communities I represent, I know the effort that has been put in, first when it was illegal, but even now that it is no longer forbidden. It is very difficult to ensure that indigenous languages are being practised.

In some of our communities, we can count on one hand the number of fluent speakers left, and fluency is critical in this. I urge the government to please understand, when designing the spending and ensured programming for the bill, that just knowing a few words, phrases, expressions and counting to 10 is a good start, but fluency is what is required.

As anybody who has attempted to learn another language knows, if one is not fluent in that language and cannot understand the depth and breadth of the language, then one does not understand its people. If that is true for native speakers of that language, they cannot understand themselves, and while that was a government design in the past, we cannot skim the surface of this effort. We have to be able to do it properly.

I will tell the story of being at a Haida feast, which was incredible. It was the chief's naming feast. It was a big deal. A friend of mine, Guujaaw, was getting his name, and it was a long feast. It was done in proper Haida style, with lots of food, song, gifts, performances and speeches. When I was there, I got to be an observer. That is hard for a politician, but I was not there to speak at all. I was just there to bear witness, because that is how a feast is held up, by those who bear witness.

At the very end of the speech, it was gift-giving time. It is a beautiful tradition of many indigenous peoples, and certainly the Haida, to offer gifts to those who have come and witnessed what has happened in the feast hall.

As the gifts were being passed out and there were so many it was taking a long time, one of the young Haida got up in the middle of the hall and said, “We'd like to sing a couple of songs. Does anyone want to come up while we're gifting? It's our tradition to sing songs.”

One by one, these young Haida were coming out of the crowd. By the end, there must have been 30 or 40 young Haida, singing song after song for an hour or more. I marvelled at this, knowing some of the history of the Haida, of the smallpox blankets and the almost extinction of their culture entirely. I was watching a renaissance, a rebirth of the language, particularly among the young people.

I was sitting beside one of the Haida elders and I said, “There's a lot of wealth here.” There were a lot of gifts being given, and the Haida, and this chief in particular, my friend, was able to describe his wealth and stature to the community, but the real wealth was happening in the middle of the floor. Their young people are able to speak with each other and their elders in Haida. It is so inspiring as someone who represents the Crown, who represents not just our present but our history. I know that people who previously held my office held the implicit racist views that indigenous people were less than and that their languages were barbaric. Those words were said in Parliament time and again. How barbaric are they was the debate of the day 100 years ago.

We watched the determination of the Haida, the Tsimshian, the Gitxsan, the Wet'suwet'en and on down the line, maintain their understanding of language, without support, and in fact, with aggression from the federal government.

We are here in Parliament. It means “to speak”. We hold and guard jealously our ability to speak in the two official languages. It is against the rules in this place to ever criticize or suggest someone speak in either English or French. We are free to express ourselves as well as we can. That is the rule of the House. We have a whole stack of books protecting that right to speak in Parliament, to express ourselves. If the bill can help move the country forward just a little to say one has the right to protect these languages, to express oneself in indigenous languages, then we will be doing a good thing.

My friend from Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou has spent his life facing challenges, political and personal, and a state determined to ignore him. His generosity and determination has stayed true to this cause, to allowing Parliament to hear speeches in indigenous languages and to seeing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples brought into law in Canada.

That part of the bill needs to move out of the preamble and into the substance of the act. If we believe in section 35 rights, if we believe in the UN declaration, and that should inform our law-making, then let it form our law-making. Allow it to express itself fully, because if Canada ever seeks to be the nation it is promising to be, then we certainly must do these types of things, and more, and do them together.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, we should be focusing on what we are accomplishing with the introduction of Bill C-91.

As I pointed out, it is historic legislation. Indigenous leaders from all regions of our country, as well as non-indigenous people, recognize the critical importance of a language heritage. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission came up with a call to action, and this legislation deals with three of the calls that I am aware of. I see this as a positive.

I would not want to take anything away from the value or significance of this legislation. I do believe that at the end of the day, for the residents of Winnipeg North and beyond, this Parliament as a whole can come together to recognize the value of this legislation and allow it to go committee. We can then hear from the different stakeholders who want to voice their thoughts, expressing concerns they might have or how they would support the legislation or would suggest ways we can improve upon it.

This is a good piece of legislation. It has been a long time coming. I look forward to it ultimately going to committee so that we can get it that much closer to receiving royal assent.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-91, An Act respecting Indigenous languages, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Business of the House

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon we will continue with the second reading debate of Bill C-91, the indigenous languages act. We hope to see that referred to committee by the end of the day so that the committee can do its important work. We understand that we have a lot of support, but we do need to consider amendments.

Tomorrow we will start debate at report stage and third reading stage of Bill C-85, the Canada-Israel free trade agreement.

Next week we will be working with our constituents in our ridings.

I would like to note that Tuesday, February 19 will be an allotted day.

On Wednesday, we will begin consideration at report stage and third reading of Bill C-77, on the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights.

Indigenous Languages Act

[Arif Virani, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and to the Minister of Democratic Institutions, Lib.]

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Winnipeg North.

Chi-meegwetch, which means “thank you very much”. I start my remarks in Algonquin, cognizant that I speak today in the House of Commons, which is located on unceded Algonquin territory and also cognizant of this occasion.

Today, I rise to speak in support of Bill C-91, the indigenous languages act. This legislation is the first of its kind in Canadian history. It begins to turn the page on 400 years of colonialism in this country and systematic efforts by successive governments to sever the ties of indigenous people to their mother tongues.

I will start with a preliminary comment, which is that all of us fortunate enough to be elected into this place come here with a sense of purpose or an objective in mind. For me, given my background in human rights and constitutional law, I came here wanting to work on issues that relate to fighting for and promoting equality and inclusion. I had in mind certain policy goals that I wanted to pursue. However, I quickly realized that sometimes in this place, we seek out an issue and sometimes an issue seeks us out. I will explain.

In January, 2017, I was asked by the Prime Minister to serve as the parliamentary secretary to the then minister of heritage. I was then asked by the minister to assist her in the co-development of Canada's first-ever indigenous languages act. I will admit to everyone in this chamber that at first I was very puzzled by this request. I am not a linguist nor am I an expert in anything related to indigenous persons. However, in retrospect, that one request actually changed the direction of my parliamentary career. Why? It is because it simply opened my eyes.

On arrival here, because of my legal background, I fancied myself a pretty knowledgeable fellow about most human rights issues. However, the reality was that I actually knew very little about the plight of indigenous persons on this land. Tasked by the minister to engage with indigenous leaders, elders, teachers and experts right across the country about what they would like to see in the new legislation, I actually learned a great deal. Most of all, I learned about how little I actually knew and had been taught about indigenous persons, their histories, traditions, languages, and most importantly, their trauma. I learned about the size, scope and extent of the residential school system, its pernicious impact on indigenous people in Canada and the lasting trauma it created.

Like many in this chamber, I am a parent. Together with my wife, and like many parents in this diverse country, I try to inculcate a sense of culture and tradition in our own little kids, Zakir and Nitin. As a south Asian household, we made efforts to connect our two little boys to the Indian subcontinent by teaching them some language skills, which in our case is Hindi. While the results have not always been perfect, and I will readily admit that the kids still prefer subtitles when they watch Bollywood films, it has not been for a lack of effort on our part.

Our experience is not any different from countless parents of all different backgrounds around this country, such as Greek, Italian, Arab, Somali, Tibetan, Ukrainian and Polish parents. All parents in this country strive to do much the same in this multicultural nation. However, there is one glaring exception to that list, and that is the experience of indigenous parents and their children in this country, because for indigenous people on this land, their efforts for 150 years to impart their language, and through it their culture, to their children were actively obstructed by the federal state.

The Government of Canada made it a policy to remove their children from their homes and put them in schools, sometimes hundreds of kilometres away, where those kids were forced to assimilate. If they dared speak Algonquin, Cree, Ojibwa, Dene or Inuktitut, they were beaten. That is the horrible legacy of the residential school system in this country. It is a system that was constructed to literally “take the Indian out of the child”.

That is where this legislation comes in. The proposed indigenous languages act has, as its express goal, the objective of supporting, promoting and revitalizing indigenous languages in this country. It is an effort to start the long journey toward restoring the vitality of indigenous languages on this land and reversing the ugly legacy of colonialism.

The teaching of language by any parent in this chamber, by settlers or indigenous persons, is always motivated by the same rationale, that in providing children with language, we connect them to who they are, to their culture. We make them knowledgeable of who they are and where they come from, knowing that in doing so we build up their self-esteem and confidence, and empower them for success. It is so intuitive that we take it for granted that by teaching a child about their culture, they will inevitably do better in terms of their education, economically, and even their health.

However, in my time spent working as the parliamentary secretary to the minister of heritage on the development of this very bill, I also came across empirical evidence. It was so startling that it has stayed with me for well over two years.

We have heard many times in the House about the crisis of mental health and in particular the grave concerns about youth suicide in Canada, particularly indigenous youth suicide.

One study put all of this into very sharp focus. Conducted in British Columbia, the analysts determined that indigenous youth in that province with a conversational knowledge of their indigenous language had a suicide rate of 13 per 100,000, a number well below the provincial average, which includes non-indigenous youth.

However, when the researchers removed indigenous language knowledge from the analysis, the youth suicide rate jumped sixfold, to 96 per 100,000, a number exponentially higher than the provincial average. This amply demonstrates that language knowledge not only connects indigenous youth to their culture but can actually help save lives.

For parliamentarians, there can be no stronger impetus than this for getting on with the critical work of passing this bill into law, yet there are other imperatives that inform this proposed legislation.

For one thing, there are the sentiments expressed to me by my constituents and by people I heard from right across the country. People in Parkdale—High Park told me they want reconciliation not to be simply a symbolic term, but rather one that materializes in concrete legislative action.

As well, there is the sheer weight of the statistics. Some 90 different indigenous languages are spoken in this country, and shockingly, not a single one of them is considered safe by UNESCO. Fully three-quarters of them are critically endangered. In addition, there was a near 50% drop between 1996 and 2011 in the number of indigenous persons in this country who reported knowledge of an indigenous mother tongue. This clearly illustrates the threat to the survival of many languages posed by an aging population of fluent elders.

I can also speak directly to what I heard when I was given the opportunity as parliamentary secretary to engage with indigenous communities across the country. From Halifax to Victoria to the Northwest Territories, what I heard was very similar. It was the sense of rupture, the sense of disconnection from one's culture experienced by so many indigenous persons victimized by the residential school system.

I recall very vividly a meeting in Saskatchewan during which an indigenous man, who may have been about 50 years old, told the group about being forcibly taken from his family and his community at the age of five, and how he was prohibited from speaking his mother tongue. When I asked him what success would look like a few years after legislation came into force, he said to me simply, “Success would be being able to enter the sweat lodge and actually understand the words being spoken by the elders.”

Make no mistake, it is indigenous persons that are the focus of this law. Much discussion has taken place in Canada and in this chamber about raising the awareness of indigenous languages among settler populations in this country through the passage of this bill. While that would be commendable, it remains a secondary, corollary aspect of this proposed legislation. The goal of this bill is not, for example, the promotion of Ojibwa fluency among non-indigenous folks in my riding or in any other riding in this country; the goal of this legislation is and has to be restoring language fluency and capacity among indigenous people in Canada so that indigenous people, by reclaiming their language, can reclaim their culture and overcome that sense of rupture I spoke about, the rupture caused by the official policy of assimilation that characterized the residential school system for 150 years.

This bill also relates to the TRC's calls to action, in particular calls 13, 14 and 15, which call for, among other things, an acknowledgement “that Aboriginal rights include Aboriginal language rights.” That is precisely what proposed section 6 of this bill does.

The focus of this bill is also on fulfilling the promise of UNDRIP, a document we as a government have committed to implementing. The UN declaration speaks to the right of self-determination of indigenous peoples, which includes “the right to revitalize, use, develop and transmit to future generations their histories, languages [and] oral traditions”. That statement is entrenched in the preamble to this proposed legislation.

This is precisely why we took the step of co-developing this proposed legislation with indigenous leaders and national indigenous organizations. The patriarchal days of the federal government telling indigenous people what is best for them are thankfully gone. It is indigenous people who know what is best for indigenous communities, and in this International Year of Indigenous Languages, it is high time we as parliamentarians all started listening to them.

I will conclude where I began. The protection and promotion of indigenous languages is not something that I ever contemplated working on, but it is an issue that found me. I am tremendously grateful for that, because on this journey I have learned that while there are many social justice causes worthy of pursuit in this country, all of them pale in comparison to the obligation we have as parliamentarians to redress the historical injustices perpetuated against indigenous persons on this land over the last 400 years of colonialism. The indigenous languages act is one small but very significant step on the path to reconciliation, and it deserves all of our support.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Madam Speaker, I will share my time with the member for Chilliwack—Hope.

Today I rise to speak to Bill C-91, the indigenous languages act. It is a bill that would, among other things, establish the office of the commissioner of indigenous languages, an office that would have the purpose of strengthening and supporting indigenous languages across this country.

Indigenous languages and cultures are numerous and diverse across Canada, and they form part of our great multicultural mosaic that certainly exists throughout this country.

UNESCO has launched a website devoted entirely to the International Year of Indigenous Languages. The website's homepage reads:

Languages play a crucial role in the daily lives of people, not only as a tool for communication, education, social integration and development, but also as a repository for each person's unique identity, cultural history, traditions and memory.

Data from the 2016 census shows that over 70 indigenous languages are spoken throughout this country. It is probably more like over 90. They represent about 260,000 people in this country. These languages reflect unique and rich indigenous cultural heritages, which should be valued by all members of Canadian society. However, under its horrific and brutal system of residential schools, the Canadian government pursued a policy through which the teaching and passing on of indigenous languages from one generation to the next was stamped out. Community knowledge of indigenous languages was severely harmed as a result of this shameful policy.

Back in 2008, on behalf of the Government of Canada, former prime minister Stephen Harper apologized to the former students of residential schools and acknowledged the terrible harms inflicted on the indigenous people of Canada through this system. At the time, he stated that the government recognized that the consequences of the Indian residential school policy were profoundly negative and that the policy had a lasting and damaging impact on aboriginal culture, heritage and language.

Our previous Conservative government recognized the damage residential schools inflicted on indigenous communities and on indigenous culture and heritage. The effects on indigenous languages were devastating, as we now know, but our former Conservative government chose to work toward a better future, alongside the indigenous peoples of Canada, by launching the Truth and Reconciliation Commission back in 2008.

There is much work that certainly needs to be done to support the strengthening and revitalization of indigenous languages, and Conservatives remain committed to supporting the work of indigenous communities to protect and reclaim indigenous languages. The protection of indigenous languages is valuable to all Canadians, as we all know, as part of our shared Canadian heritage.

Conservatives recognize the inherent value that comes from the preservation of rich and diverse indigenous languages and cultures. However, the Liberal government seems to have introduced the legislation as if it was an afterthought. The Prime Minister promised legislation back in 2016. That was almost two and a half years ago. Now, with only 12 or 13 weeks left in the current parliamentary session, he has decided to table it. He sat on this promise for over two and a half years. During all that time, no such legislation was introduced. Unfortunately, this is a common tactic of the Liberal government, which promises much yet fails to deliver.

Time and time again, the Liberals have failed in their commitments to indigenous communities across this country by constantly adding to their list of broken promises.

Last February, the Prime Minister made a promise in the House of Commons to pursue a new legal framework that would give greater recognition to indigenous rights. He said, “We need to get to a place where indigenous peoples in Canada are in control of their own destinies and making their own decisions about their futures.”

However, not even a year after making the promise while standing on the floor in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister himself, standing before the Assembly of First Nations, had to apologize for his Liberal government's utter failure to meet its duty to consult with first nations over the Trans Mountain expansion project.

As we all know, right now the current Liberal government has no plans at all to move forward with any legislation before the next election to implement the legal framework the Prime Minister promised to indigenous communities just last year. These broken promises to indigenous peoples are not only irresponsible, but very harmful as well.

Speaking on the failure of the Liberal government to introduce its promised legal framework before the next election, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, formerly of Saskatchewan but now director of the University of British Columbia's Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre, stated, “Promising people transformative change and failing is not only disappointing, it's also inhumane. It is a kind of pain and trauma that just gets compounded.”

Unfortunately, the current Liberal government has a long record of making promises to indigenous communities across this country, only to break those promises as soon as they are made.

I am going to share some interesting and encouraging facts on indigenous languages from the province of Saskatchewan, the city of Saskatoon, and my riding of Saskatoon—Grasswood.

Before I became a member of Parliament, I served for nine and a half years as a trustee on the Saskatoon board of education. At that time, we certainly celebrated indigenous language around our board table. I was proud to be involved in the expansion of the indigenous language training program in Saskatoon—Grasswood. In my riding, many students are fortunate to participate in indigenous language instruction. I will name a few schools.

I will start with Confederation Park Community School, which offers language instruction in Cree. About 280 students are involved, from pre-kindergarten all the way up to grade 8. These students benefit from the Nêhiyâwiwin Cree language and cultural program.

Westmount Community School provides a Métis cultural program that includes Michif language instruction for students from pre-kindergarten all the way up to grade 8.

The Charles Red Hawk Elementary School also offers Cree language instruction from pre-kindergarten all the way up to grade 4.

Mount Royal Collegiate, Princess Alexandra High School and even King George elementary school all provide Cree language instruction.

The Saskatoon public schools offer instruction in three indigenous languages: Cree, Michif and Dakota. Dakota language and cultural lessons are offered at the Chief Whitecap and Charles Red Hawk schools, and I should mention that Chief Whitecap is a major participant with the Saskatoon board of education on a new education formula.

St. Frances Cree Bilingual School in my riding of Saskatoon—Grasswood offers Cree education to 440 students from pre-kindergarten to grade 5, and to another 150 students in grades 6 to 8. Because of the growing demand for Cree bilingual education, St. Frances Cree Bilingual School is now serving students at two locations.

At the Oskayak High School in a neighbouring riding, Cree language instruction is offered to grades 9 to 12, where approximately 70 students are receiving Cree language instruction.

The Greater Saskatoon Catholic Schools offer core Cree language to some 348 students, from pre-kindergarten all the way up to grade 8, at St. Mary's Wellness and Education Centre.

In conclusion, the Conservatives will support this bill going forward to second reading. We stand committed to reviewing Bill C-91 in committee to ensure that the current Liberal government once again lives up to the promises it has made to all indigenous peoples of Canada.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Madam Speaker, I rise to speak on Bill C-91, an act respecting indigenous languages.

I come from the land of the Coast Salish people, namely the Kwantlen, Katzie and Tsawwassen first nations.

For me language is like one's mother. It nourishes, heals, embraces and caresses us. For this country, language has been one of its defining legacies, both good and bad. When it comes to French and English, the protection of these languages is part of our Constitution, and debates on how to protect them, particularly where either speaker is in a minority, have been robust. For French and English language rights, we have become a beacon, an example and a standard for others to use and see.

However, our history is not so great when it comes to the indigenous languages of this nation. This country took young children from their parents, incarcerated them in prison-like environments, took away their names and re-named them, punished them for speaking in the language of their peoples, and stole their identities from them.

This was done in full sight of the governments of the day and with the blessings of both church and state. However, this was a much more sinister plan, one designed and concocted to eliminate and exterminate a people, a culture, a society that was rich, humane and in harmony with the land.

Civilizations and societies, however great, do this from time to time. They commit to actions that they see as right and justified, and do heinous crimes because they usually fail to see how their actions will affect the people they are created for. Sometimes it is deliberate, and sometimes it is out of ignorance, but at no time is it acceptable.

However, Canada, and to some degree the world, has come a long way from the days of forced assimilation and residential schools to, now, truth and reconciliation, and recognizing indigenous languages as a right.

This bill will put into place actions 13, 14 and 15 of the Truth And Reconciliation Commission of Canada and put the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples into effect. It will require the federal government to fund indigenous languages and create an office of the commissioner of indigenous languages. This is very important, as currently only 20% of indigenous people can converse in their language, and in B.C. that number is even less, with only one in 27 being able to converse in an indigenous language.

If one doubts the value and power of language, then just look to how it affects youth suicide rates. With those who spoke their indigenous language, the rates were one-sixth of those who did not. Those with no ability to speak their language had a rate of suicide that was six times higher. Today all 90 indigenous languages are in danger of extinction.

This is only the beginning. Languages help people understand the richness of their culture and the history of their peoples, and see the world through a different and more colourful lens. It helps people appreciate their ancestry, history and lineage. While this country has had its fair share of shortfalls and misdeeds when it comes to language, culture and people, it has also learned from them and created some of the greatest policies on diversity and human rights, both of which have shaped me and who I am.

In 1978, this country adopted a policy of multiculturalism, which for me was going to be one of the most defining pieces of legislation, along with the charter, that would allow me to grow up and be the person I am today. Let me tell the House why.

When I was in kindergarten in 1980, I was a child of an immigrant. I was brown, had long hair, which was tied in a bun on the top of my head, and I looked nothing like other people in my class. All I wanted to do was look like everyone else. I wanted to be Canadian. Little did I know that, under multiculturalism, being Canadian was exactly what I was and how I should be.

I was lucky enough to have a teacher who knew this legislation, the timing and appropriateness of it. She decided to share this with me and my family. She called my parents, brought them over and, for me, at first, it was a dreadful moment. I thought this was when I was going to be put into ESL, English as a second language, that dreadful place from where one never got out. However, it was different. She spoke to my parents and said, “It seems you are teaching him Punjabi at home, and I want you to know that this is going to be an asset and a gift, something you should cherish and even do more of. Let me take care of the English at school, and I will make sure he does not lag behind.”

It stuck with me. My white Caucasian teacher was telling me to learn the language of my parents. She also said to make sure that I learned to read and write it, because it would be an asset in the future. I had no idea, because at that time, everyone was under pressure to change their names to make them more anglicized and to learn English and forget about their ancestral languages. However, it stuck with me.

In grade seven, I registered in an evening Punjabi school at the Khalsa Diwan Society in Vancouver, and I learned to read and write the language. In grade eight, I fell in love with the language and started listening to British Punjabi bhangra and hip hop, and from there, there was no stopping. I loved reading newspapers, history and sometimes literature and listening to Punjabi poetry. It helped me understand what my parents went through, what my aunts and uncles appreciated and listened to and how flavours of foods really tasted. Today it gives me great honour when people tell me my Punjabi is great and ask when I came to Canada. I say I was born and raised in Canada. It is the reason I speak this language and can read and write it.

Fast-track to 35 years later. I serve in a government led by a Prime Minister who himself was brought up in a home with a similar language upbringing. I read at one point that his father made a rule in the household that if they were on the main floor, they were to speak French with their friends and parents. If they were upstairs in their bedrooms or downstairs in the rec room, they could speak English with their friends, but on the main floor they were to speak French. That is why the Prime Minister is fully bilingual and cherishes that right. It was very encouraging for me to read that it was not only my parents who had those rules at home. Other people across this country also shared those same rules.

I sometimes feel like a failure when it comes to my home, because I probably breach a lot of those rules. I speak English to my kids when I should be teaching them other languages at the same time. For that, I am sorry. However, I have given them the gift of learning Punjabi at evening school and at day school as well.

I hope this act will give our indigenous children the same right, the same sense of pride and belonging and the same tools to preserve their languages, joke in their languages and dialects and sing in their beautiful rhythms. I hope the House quickly ratifies this legislation so that never again will our indigenous people have to fight for their right to preserve their languages. May they always be able to cherish and speak their languages, and may Canada become a beacon for indigenous languages around the world.

[Gary Anandasangaree, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Multiculturalism (Multiculturalism), Lib.]

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my friend from Surrey Centre.

I am deeply honoured to speak this afternoon in support of Bill C-91, the indigenous languages act. I want to start by acknowledging that we are gathered here on the traditional unceded lands of the Algonquin people.

Our language is at the core of who we are as a people, as a community and as a nation.

Before I speak to the important aspects of the bill, I would like to explain to the House the major challenges that I face as a first-generation immigrant to Canada.

Every day, I struggle to make sure that my two daughters understand and speak their mother tongue, Tamil, at home.

For me, the ability to be part of this community is at my core. The ability to understand this language allows me to understand this community. I want my two children to be able to have the opportunity and the right to understand the language and be connected to the people. Likewise, all families want their language to be spoken and understood, be it English, French, Finnish or Tamil. It is who we are as a people.

However, these languages are not at risk of extinction, nor are the speakers and keepers of these languages dying. Most indigenous language speakers do not have the privilege and protection that is available to other languages in Canada. Sadly, the legacy for indigenous people in Canada is that every one of the 90 languages spoken here prior to colonization is at threat of being lost. According to UNESCO, 75% of these languages are in danger of becoming extinct. Imagine the languages, dialects and voices of many communities lost forever. I cannot fathom it. We cannot fathom it, and we cannot understand it.

This happened because successive governments undertook the process of colonization that Madam Justice McLachlin has called “cultural genocide”. This meant that the government took children from their homes and their communities and put them in residential schools. The children were forbidden from speaking their languages and practising their spirituality and were often abused for practising who they were.

Some communities were forceably moved from one geographical location to another. Some children from indigenous homes were taken and placed in foster homes or put up for adoption through the sixties scoop. We have a modern-day version of the sixties scoop, whereby children are taken by child welfare agencies and put in foster care.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission report outlined many experiences of residential school survivors, and I want to share two such stories.

One is from William Herney, who spoke Mi'kmaq with his brother at residential school. He said:

And she says, “What are you two boys doing?” “Nothing, Sister.” “Oh, yes, I heard you. You were talking that language, weren't you?” “Yes, Sister.” “Come here,” she said. I went over. She took a stick. She leaned me over to the bathtub, the bathtub, grabbed me by the neck, and I don't know how many whacks she gave me over my bum, and I was crying like I don't know what. Then, she took a piece of soap, and she washed my mouth in it. I can still even taste that lye soap. All my life I tasted that taste. And she said, “You don't talk that language here. That's a no, no, no, you don't, you understand?” Looks at me straight in the eye. She said, “Do you understand that?” And I said, “Yes, Sister, I understand.”

Rose Dorothy Charlie, who was at an Anglican school in Carcross, said:

They took my language. They took it right out of my mouth. I never spoke it again. My mother asked me why, why you could hear me, she’s, like, “I could teach you.” I said, “No.” And she said, “Why?” I said, “I’m tired of getting hit in the mouth, tired of it. I’m just tired of it, that’s all.” Then I tried it, I went to Yukon College, I tried it, and then my own auntie laugh at me because I didn’t say...the words right, she laughed at me, so I quit. “No more,” I said. Then people bothered me, and say, “How come you don’t speak your language?” And I said, “You wouldn't want to know why.” So, I never speak, speak it again.

The depth of the loss of indigenous languages cannot be quantified. The eternal links to language, and by extension culture, have been broken. Generations of indigenous people in Canada have been shamed into losing their language and culture because of the policies and practices of successive Canadian governments and many institutions.

A patchwork of programs and initiatives exist to support the preservation, protection and revitalization of indigenous languages.

Not all languages face the same risk of extinction. Some have better odds of survival than others, but it is all relative. We need to do more to protect, preserve and revitalize all indigenous languages.

We cannot change the past. The past is done. However, we can and must change the course of the future.

In this moment in time, the 42nd Parliament has made enormous strides in advancing equality, human rights and indigenous rights. In 2015, our government committed to implementing all 94 calls to action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Calls to action 13, 14 and 15 require the entrenchment of legislation and a framework that will ensure the protection, preservation and revitalization of indigenous languages.

Our government adopted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and this past year, this House adopted Bill C-262 to ensure that the laws of Canada are in harmony with UNDRIP. UNDRIP requires state parties to take effective measures to support indigenous languages.

In 1981, section 35 of the Canadian Constitution enshrined a full box of rights to first nations, Métis and Inuit peoples. Such rights include the right to language.

Our Prime Minister affirmed that Canada would move forward on a relationship that nation to nation, Inuit to Crown and government to government, all based on the recognition of the rights framework. Bill C-91 does this, and this year, as we mark the United Nations Year of Indigenous Languages, we bring this bill forward to change the trajectory of indigenous languages and, once and for all, commit to ensuring the long-term protection, preservation and revitalization of these languages.

Permit me to outline some major features of Bill C-91. This bill was codeveloped with the national indigenous organizations, including the AFN, ITK and the MNC. This bill offers a distinction-based approach to languages. That is, it recognizes that not all languages are in need of the same level of protection. It respects the principle of self-determination. It envisions a national framework and commission that will monitor and report on the progress made.

Let me offer one additional reason for the urgency in passing this legislation. Three weeks ago, I had the opportunity to visit Prince George, British Columbia. I met with members of the Lheidli T'enneh first nation. There were five fluent speakers of Lheidli T'enneh with the dialect of Dakelh. I met the chief and several members of council, none of whom spoke the language, but all were striving to preserve the language itself. The loss of this language is imminent if a concerted effort is not made to preserve it.

Last week, elder Mary Gouchie, one of the native speakers, died. In marking her passing, the MP for Cariboo—Prince George said this of elder Mary Gouchie:

Mary understood that our words connect us to our past. Our words and our music are two of the foundations of the human experience. Without them, we have no past. Without them, we have no future, and without them, we have no awareness of who we might be.

In closing, I want to conclude by recognizing the keepers and teachers of all indigenous languages like elder Mary Gouchie. Notwithstanding that so many indigenous languages are endangered in Canada, the mere fact that so many of these languages still exist is due to the brave unsung heroes who have worked so hard to protect and preserve these languages.

Let us do right by them. Let us do right by future generations, and let us just do this.