Thank you, Madam Chair. Meegwetch.
[Witness spoke in Anishinabek]
[English]
Thank you for the invitation to come and speak to the committee.
I can speak primarily to the codevelopment process, which I was involved in, and I do want to point out that I am here on an independent basis.
I am an independent contractor with the Assembly of First Nations and was assigned to the indigenous languages initiative to provide leadership on behalf of the AFN in the codevelopment process. My views about the process and the outcome are mine and are not attributable to the Assembly of First Nations.
There was no definition of “codevelopment” as the process got under way and evolved along the way, but it was methodical, in my opinion.
The AFN has its own structure and organization around the process, including a chiefs committee made up of representatives from across the country and, likewise, a technical committee similarly representative of the regions across the country. The national chief chairs the chiefs committee and has provided leadership on this matter overall.
The most important element of the AFN structure and organization is the chiefs in assembly, and they provided authorization and direction along the way based on the information provided to them stemming from the rights holders engagements that we conducted as part of this process.
Insofar as the interaction between the parties is concerned, one of the first significant steps taken was the parties agreeing to some fundamental principles relating to the process and the desired outcome of indigenous languages legislation.
The principles did establish that we would work collaboratively, transparently and on a distinctions basis to develop the legislation and that the legislation would address revitalization, recovery, preservation, protection, maintenance and promotion of first nations, Inuit and Métis languages.
We operated on a couple of levels. There was a multilateral process, but there were also bilateral processes between each of the parties and the federal government.
The principles firmly established that the intended outcome would respect and implement the calls to action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the federal government's commitment to nation-to-nation, government-to-government or Inuit-Crown relationships.
The principle was also established that the legislation would recognize that indigenous languages are fundamental to indigenous self-determination and that such legislation would, among other things, further affirm and address the right of indigenous peoples to revitalize, use, develop and transmit their languages to future generations, including through the control of their educational systems and institutions. It also established that each of the parties would conduct their own engagements in relation to getting the instruction and the direction about input and contributions to the process.
With respect to engagement, last week the national chief shared with you the engagement report we produced as a result of the meetings we held across the country. The basic question we asked people was what their expectations were about what the legislation should say. We didn't predetermine or prejudge anything. It was wide open.
The people who participated in it worked in this area of language revitalization: the champions, the teachers and the academics but also the rights holders and elders who came to our sessions and told us what their expectations were. The contributions we got from these sessions were very consistent across the country, from British Columbia through to the Maritimes and with respect to first nations communities in the north.
The engagement report generally captures the voices we heard, and then we turned the engagement report into a set of 11 principles, which was the direction that was provided from the chiefs in assembly, reflecting what the engagement report said about what people had said in relation to what they wanted the legislation to say. That was our direction and now it's our measure: Does the legislation in fact cover these issues, these points and these expectations?
We did make sure that the people understood that not necessarily everything gets into the legislation in terms of what needs to happen in relation to federal support for language revitalization, that some might have to find its way into regulations; some of it might actually have to find its way through policy work or through funding work in terms of the expenditure authorizations that will be necessary to support this work; and that work is going to take place, has begun and will continue through to ensuring that the intentions that are expressed and set out in the legislation actually materialize.
I've been involved in other processes where, after the legislation was developed and processed in Parliament, the engagement between the indigenous party or parties and the federal government was discontinued. Thus, the work around implementation did not produce the kinds of changes and supports that people had in mind in designing the legislation. Therefore, we believe it's critical for that codevelopment work to continue. Where there might be questions or uncertainties in relation to what the legislation says in parts, we hope we're going to be able to clarify that with greater certainty in terms of the work on regulations or policy, or as I alluded to earlier, funding—the funding regime that needs to support implementation.
We had our fundamental set of principles that we got from our engagement process, and we forwarded that into the codevelopment process, which again produced a set of 12 principles, which then were intended to inform the development of the legislation itself. Then we went from consensus principles to the development of something called “the technical discussion paper”. The technical discussion paper took the form of a framework or outline of what this legislation now says. We worked together on formulating the broad framework and outline.
Obviously there was a memorandum to cabinet that we weren't involved in, and that's a challenge that we would have liked to have overcome but didn't. We were somewhat involved in some of the drafting work. We had access to the earlier drafts of the bill, by signing confidentiality agreements and by getting the executive to provide that access for us.
There were challenges, mostly with respect to the transparency area, because we did not see some products that resulted from the discussions, and yes, there are improvements to be made. We had desired a further elaboration of clause 6 in relation to section 35. That would have included further elaborating what the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples has to say about these issues.
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.