Evidence of meeting #93 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was interpretation.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Clerk of the House of Commons
That's an edited version. There is the daily issue that comes out.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Is it realistic that the edited version not be translated by the member speaking, but that any time an indigenous language is spoken—and I would limit it to indigenous languages spoken in the House—it is properly translated by a professional translator within the context of Hansard, as opposed to being provided? Is that realistic or is that crazy?
Clerk of the House of Commons
I'll let André speak to it, but I suspect that if the House decided to do that, they would have to live with the possibility of a delay in the issuance of the Hansard.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
That's why I asked about the publication at the end of the Parliament.
Deputy Clerk, Procedure
That's a good question, Mr. Graham. As you are aware, when we're talking about S.O. 31s, statements by members, the individual makes a statement, and it stays on the record and then can be added later on.
The difficulty comes—and it's up to the committee to decide what they would want to do with that—when you're in question period, let's say, or during debate, and an individual makes a statement in a language that is not known by the other individual or cannot be interpreted immediately. You are stuck in a kind of void.
Imagine the situation afterward, where this intervention would be included in the Debates, let's say, afterward or days after. It's hard to see how in the Debates there would be continuity between the intervention by the member and other member, who did not respond at all during questions and comments to the comments being made, because that member was not in a position to answer. That's why there was, through the years, from the interpretation services and Hansard, a practice of mostly doing it through statements by members.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Maybe I can start by going back to how things are handled in the Senate. I think I'm right in saying that the standing orders of the Senate have actually been rewritten to specifically allow the use of Inuktitut under certain constrained circumstances. I think that's correct.
Conservative
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
The approach you adopted then was to say essentially that we'll respond as the demand is made. I gather that would be the simplest way of summing this up.
Clerk of the House of Commons
Actually, at the time there were other aboriginal senators who spoke languages other than Inuktitut. We had one senator who spoke Salish and another senator who spoke Montagnais. This was an experiment. There was a pilot project. There was an agreement to just see how we could handle this. Again, because of the technology and the space limitations, we wanted to see whether or not we could actually cope with this on the Senate side.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Okay.
You described having some difficulties finding translators to translate to and from Inuktitut. I guess it was just from Inuktitut, not into Inuktitut. Is that correct?
Clerk of the House of Commons
That's right. It was from Inuktitut into English. I don't believe we ever experimented the other way around because, in fact, the senators were comfortable in English and so it was not really necessary.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Right. Ottawa is the place where planes fly back and forth to Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut, and, therefore, all things considered as Canadian cities go, we have a wider supply of Inuktitut speakers here than one would encounter elsewhere in the country. When you talk about a language like Salish, I'm going to guess that is not so true.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Nor is it for a number of other languages. I do wonder about the kinds of practical considerations we're going to have. On the one hand, it sounds to me as though you were able to move forward in the Senate with the Inuktitut pilot project because you had the consent of the Montagnais and Salish speaker. They didn't say it seemed unfair to them. They understood that we were experimenting with something that does not create a hierarchy of languages.
The question I'm asking essentially boils down to—and maybe this is an unfair question to ask someone in your position—how do we avoid creating the kind of hierarchy in which the more widely spoken languages and those that have the advantage of being “local”—and I say that with quotation marks around it, but you get the point...? How do we avoid that sort of thing?
Clerk of the House of Commons
I think there you'd have to actually work with the interpretation services and develop some kind of idea or appreciation of the availability of people who might be willing to provide the interpretation service in a specific language. As Mr. Graham pointed out, there's always the possibility of trying to do it from a remote location. That presents its own challenges, but it may reduce the notice time that we experienced in the Senate if the interpretation services say that it is in fact a viable option.
Deputy Clerk, Procedure
Mr. Reid, if I can add something, I was going through my notes, and one of the assemblies in Canada has identified, I think, nine aboriginal languages, and they have decided to do a rotation such that they have one language per week.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
It's the Northwest Territories, yes. They have only three official languages in Nunavut—French, English, and Inuktitut.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
They also have the Inuit languages, of which there are two, actually.