Procedure and House Affairs Committee on March 20th, 2018

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

—so this was the first occasion to come up with a word.

In my career, I ended up in the Hockey Hall of Fame, and that wasn't because of my abilities as a hockey player, although I played hockey. Back in the 1980s when I was in law school, I had a second job as a radio host—in Cree. There was a project to do the play-by-play of a hockey game between the Montreal Canadiens and the Quebec Nordiques, and I participated in that project. One of the things we needed to do was to come up with words for “puck”—

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

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

—and “referee”. Those were the kinds of things that did not exist. I carried that on throughout my career and did the same for legal terminology, and now I'm doing it for parliamentary business. It was a nice occasion to sit down with elders and explain what I do as a member of Parliament. Once they understood the concept, they proposed a couple of words. I think the best one was yimstimagesu.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

On leaving this, were there other indigenous languages that had or have the same issue?

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

I wouldn't know.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Okay, thanks. That just struck me.

You mentioned the example of New Zealand in your remarks, and of course we have the examples of NWT and Yukon. Are those examples that you would ask us to look at as potential models, or do you have others that you would suggest we look at in detail, particularly as we grapple with the fundamentals here?

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

What I can do, Mr. Chair, is send you not only a written brief of my presentation and some references but also suggestions of other models you could look at.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

That would be really helpful.

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

I think that would be important.

When I was coming back, I tried to find a case law or jurisprudence with respect to the interpretation of section 22 of the Constitution, because it does refer to other languages besides English and French. I haven't found jurisprudence about that yet, but I'll continue looking because, as I said, we need to read section 22 along with sections 25, 26, and 35 of our Constitution to determine that this right that I'm talking about, to speak Cree in Parliament, is a constitutional right. It is a human right as well, and I think that's where we need to go in moving forward with this question.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thanks.

I'll say one last thing, and I don't expect you to have an answer to this, but you may know something about it, given the interpretation.

I think that at some point, Chair and colleagues, we're going to need to take a look at where we're going to be in the very near future in terms of simultaneous interpretation as it relates to AI. I don't know about others here, but I'm sure you're doing the same, reading and trying to get a sense of where things are and what the issues are that we need to grapple with.

There are those who suggest that within a very short period of time, AI will be such that you could actually almost have an earpiece and be talking to someone and have instantaneous interpretation. Are you familiar with this at all?

No? Okay. But I think it is something that we need to look at, because parliaments will exist for a long time and AI is going to have a major impact.

Romeo, thank you again, sir. I hope that we can call upon you at any time as we continue our deliberations.

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

Sure.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Very good. Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you very much. Meegwetch.

Now we'll go to Ms. Sahota.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Thank you for being here today, Mr. Saganash. I appreciate all the work you've being doing. I think we're truly blessed to have you as a member of Parliament so that you can help us forward this agenda and move towards a move inclusive Parliament.

After the testimony that we had from the clerk, I can't help but feel that in this case I would hate for perfect to become the enemy of the good. We're trying to progress, and we're trying to make sure that you who have the right to speak in your native language get to exercise that right and that others who have come before you or will come after you also get to do the same.

You were saying that there are about 10 members of Parliament currently who may or may not fluently speak an indigenous language. What languages are those?

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

There's certainly Dene. My colleague, MP Jolibois speaks her language, which is Dene. When Robert-Falcon Ouellette spoke Cree, that led us to this room today. He spoke in five Cree dialects.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

What are the most spoken indigenous languages today?

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

Cree.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Cree is the most spoken?

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

There is Cree in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, North Dakota, and Montana.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Okay. I was just sitting here thinking also—

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

That's about 450,000 people.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

—that there have also been witnesses before committees and other members of Parliament who have served throughout the years who may not have English or French as their first language. Therefore, sometimes in speaking those languages, they make mistakes. Sometimes we have to understand through context what they are trying to say, so the accuracy we were talking about earlier, which we may lose through a relay.

I'm sure those people are sometimes silenced, but we wouldn't want to silence people who don't speak English or French as their first language. If we are not able to find anyone to interpret certain languages, but have to rely on relaying the language into French or into English, would you say that is still satisfactory for us to move forward with this? Could we just accept that loss of maybe a couple of words that we'll then be able to figure out in the context of the whole speech as given?

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

Having recognized what you just said, if we do recognize that, I think it's a problem that we can deal with. Let's say my mom got elected in 2019. She only speaks Cree. With her budget as an MP, she could certainly hire her boy to translate. Well, she wouldn't be allowed to do that, but I could certainly help her write in English what she would tell me.

She's one of the better Cree speakers in our world. I spoke that language for the first seven years of my life, before being taken away to a residential school, and she taught me that language. That's why, although they tried to take away my language in the residential school for 10 years, the roots of my spoken language, my spoken Cree, were so strong. It was because of her. That's why it never disappeared.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Are there any official training classes for Cree, or is it all passed down through the family?

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

Absolutely there are. There's even an application for it right now. I know of two applications that you can look up and download. You can type in any English word or French word, and—