Procedure and House Affairs Committee on March 20th, 2018

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

So that works well.

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

They have the same Algonquian roots.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

That obviously works well in personal communication. It may be face-to-face meetings, maybe even small town halls and things like that. What about your communications such as websites, householders, and things like that? Do you offer those in multiple languages?

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

No, just the householders and ten percenters.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Have you had to use interpretation or translation services in your riding-level communications, whether written or in town hall meetings or things like that?

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

In what way?

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

In your constituency, for example in a town hall meeting.

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Amazingly, even though the Inuit have been our neighbours for thousands of years, the Cree language and Inuktitut are very different. In fact, there isn't one word in Inuktitut that has crossed over to Cree, and there isn't one Cree word that has crossed over to Inuktitut. They're the two solitudes of the north.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

In other words, what you're telling me is that you probably have had to use interpretation and translation services.

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

In that case, yes.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Has that worked pretty well?

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Yes, absolutely.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

That leads me to my next question, and you touched on it a little bit earlier. What's your understanding in terms of the number of interpreters that are available to translate from Cree into English and French? Are you aware of what the numbers would be and whether those individuals you're aware of would meet the translation bureau standards and qualifications that are expected?

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

The availability of interpreters is pretty good. Not the Cree Nation Government, but the Cree regional James Bay government, is a regional government structure where half of the membership is Cree and the other half is the non-indigenous communities in the riding. That's the regional government in northern Quebec. In their proceedings and deliberations, there's simultaneous Cree, French, and English translation. The services are there and are easily accessible. In fact, I suggest you communicate with that regional government to talk about the service and how it works.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

So you don't have any concern, then, about the issue that has come up a couple of times already, namely the idea that there may be a limited number of trained interpreters for the translation into French directly, so there wouldn't be a need for the relay interpretation?

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

No.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

You don't feel this would be an issue?

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

No, absolutely not.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Good. Thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you.

I just forgot to mention that we couldn't get a room that was televised and that's why APTN have their camera here.

I'll just ask the committee a question before I forget. One of the reporters has asked for a copy of the report that the researcher did of the various jurisdictions. Does anyone have a problem with our allowing that?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Good. Thank you.

Now we'll go to Mr. Christopherson.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and I want to thank my colleague Romeo for coming in today.

I've been serving in Parliaments since 1990, provincially and federally, and although we're all equal, I have found that in every Parliament there are those among us who rise above. It's because of who they are and the gravitas their personality brings forward. Two of the people who I've served with and who I think come under that heading are Mr. Irwin Cotler and Mr. Ed Broadbent.

Romeo, I want to say that I add you to that, and I consider myself to be very honoured to serve at a time when you are here, because of your important role in building our nation, in giving life to our Constitution, and in doing it in a way that's so classy—I can't think of another word—and so elegant almost, and yet the forcefulness behind your passion is so clear.

Having said that, colleagues, I debated whether I wanted to say this or not, but I think I need to. As much as a successful outcome would be seen as a positive part of continuing to build our nation, I think we have to recognize, based on what our friend and colleague Romeo has said this morning, that the cost of failure is so great that failure is not an option.

We started this by asking “is it time?” and “how could we do it?”, and it was sort of notional, but having now started down this road and having laid out in front the historical implications of how important this is to many of our fellow Canadians, to then fail in this endeavour would mean that our time and our Parliament that we serve in have done more damage than harm, because we started out to do the right thing and failed. I will just say I personally feel that now that we've set down this course we have to succeed. We have to find a way to send the message to our fellow Canadians that we are serious about giving them their rights in a way that is respectful and about acknowledging the rights they have.

That's just to say that usually we do things that would be nice to do, but if they don't work, well, you know, we'll come back at it another time in another Parliament. We don't have that option. We really, really need to make this work, and I have a sense that we will.

I'm like my voting brother, Mr. Simms—that's inside baseball and I don't expect anybody else to get it—on the 150 years. I'm having some trouble getting around the fact that there wasn't even a word for member of Parliament. Now, is that because we weren't electing enough people for this to become an issue? Is it because there was such a disconnect that there was no need for it?

Can you help me just understand a little, Romeo, how we could get to the point? I'm like Scotty: 150 years to come up with a word that describes what a member of Parliament does, given that it's the foundation of our constitutional democracy...? Help me understand, Romeo. How did we get here?

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Well, it's for all of the reasons you've mentioned. It's also the fact that there was never a Cree from northern Quebec elected to Parliament—

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Okay.