Oh, oh!
Evidence of meeting #95 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 senate.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #95 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 senate.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:50 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
12:50 p.m.
NDP
Kennedy Stewart NDP Burnaby South, BC
Wow. I have to roll up my sleeves to cover this committee.
Thank you very much for your testimony today. It's very useful.
I'm just wondering how often you review your own system. When you do your reviews, do you go to other jurisdictions to continually learn about how to improve your own system? That would be within Canada or perhaps outside of Canada.
12:50 p.m.
Manager, Public Affairs and Communications, Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories
Sorry, is that to me?
12:50 p.m.
NDP
12:50 p.m.
Manager, Public Affairs and Communications, Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories
As far as a review goes, our review is just based on feedback from the public and whether or not people are actually watching us. We do have an annual review. We will actually call the communities to see if people are viewing the proceedings and if they're listening to them in the official languages.
We also do a full gauge as to how many interpreters we bring in for each language. We do calculate, on about a yearly basis, which languages we're utilizing more often than others.
12:50 p.m.
NDP
12:50 p.m.
Clerk of the Assembly, Yukon Legislative Assembly
I would say it's probably similar for us in the sense that we respond mostly to whatever feedback we get from members or the general public in terms of what kinds of services they want us to provide. There has been more emphasis in the last few years on ensuring, for example, that when a member speaks in French in the House, the words appear in French in Hansard. We've been able to work out a system to make that work. There hasn't been the same demand with regard to indigenous languages.
12:50 p.m.
NDP
Kennedy Stewart NDP Burnaby South, BC
Thank you.
I also have a question for both of you. Often when you see debates and things on television, you'll have a sign language interpreter in a little box up in the top corner. Sometimes those are done in a remote way, so the interpreter is not actually in the room, they're in some studio somewhere else. I'm wondering if you've ever experimented with remote translation, where the interpreter would be on call and would be able to do this remotely.
Either one of you can start.
12:50 p.m.
Manager, Public Affairs and Communications, Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories
In the Northwest Territories we have not experienced anything remotely. We have travelled for public hearings with the standing committees and we've had interpreters from the communities come into the public hearing and do simultaneous interpretation, but we've never done anything via video conferencing, or anything remotely with technology.
12:50 p.m.
Clerk of the Assembly, Yukon Legislative Assembly
The situation here in Yukon is similar. When some of our committees travel to communities, we try to ensure there is someone there who speaks the local indigenous language in case that's necessary, but we have not had people participate by video conference or teleconference, similar to the way we're doing it right now.
12:50 p.m.
NDP
Kennedy Stewart NDP Burnaby South, BC
Through your travels looking at this issue, do you know of any jurisdictions where they would use remote interpretation services?
12:50 p.m.
Manager, Public Affairs and Communications, Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories
I don't, sorry.
12:50 p.m.
NDP
Kennedy Stewart NDP Burnaby South, BC
Okay, that's that.
We talked about the large parts, the mechanics of your system day to day, but are there any quirks that we should look out for if we start to put this in place? Were there any hiccups in the system that you overcame quickly and that we might try to avoid as we're putting it in here?
Let's start with Mr. McCormick.
12:50 p.m.
Clerk of the Assembly, Yukon Legislative Assembly
Given that the Yukon Legislative Assembly doesn't provide simultaneous interpretation for any languages, I guess I really don't have anything to offer you in that regard.
12:55 p.m.
Manager, Public Affairs and Communications, Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories
In the Northwest Territories, because it is such a large land mass, we do sometimes have challenges with travel. That's something that is completely beyond our control.
Another concern is accommodation. If you have to book people travelling in from different areas, you have to make sure there is accommodation available. It might not be a problem in Ottawa, but it is sometimes in Yellowknife.
Reliability is also a concern. You have to make sure that you find people who are reliable and able to provide the service. Reference checking, I think, would be important.
12:55 p.m.
NDP
Kennedy Stewart NDP Burnaby South, BC
I have just one more question.
You say you continually check, on an annual basis, with people in the communities to see how they're dealing with this. Can you give us some sense of the feedback? I can imagine it would be quite a thing to not hear your language often and then to turn on the television and hear it spoken. Can you give a sense of the feedback, the highs and lows, perhaps?
12:55 p.m.
Manager, Public Affairs and Communications, Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories
Lots of the feedback we've received has been very positive, especially when we reached out to the elders in some of the smaller communities. They really appreciate the fact that when they turn on their TV to watch the proceedings of the legislative assembly, they can listen to it in their official language.
As far as negative feedback goes, I haven't received any, to date.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Mahsi, Drin Gwiinzih Shalakat
I just have a quick question for Ms. Mager.
You said people watch it on TV. So if someone's speaking Tlicho and it's on TV, how do the people who speak the other eight languages and English and French know what the person's saying?
12:55 p.m.
Manager, Public Affairs and Communications, Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories
When we do our scheduling, we rotate it. We have the four audio languages, so when we're scheduling, there's audio one, which is the floor language, audio two, which is usually Tlicho, and then audio three and audio four, which we rotate on a regular basis.
When we're scheduling our broadcasting, we will normally start with the live proceedings because they go for two hours and they're always in the floor language, which is mainly English. After the two hours of live, we will go to Tlicho, then to another aboriginal language, and then another, and then we'll go back to English. We rotate the languages so that it's not just the aboriginal language.