Forty-eight hours is normally the period. It has proven, so far as Inuktitut is concerned, to be a reasonable deadline for a senator to inform the clerk that he or she would want to address the Senate or the committee in that language. We think that 48 hours is a reasonable period of time in which to make it available especially—and it's always the same—to make sure that the interpreters are available. As I say, I think that the House of Commons—and I say that with the greatest respect for the House—and we in Canada are in the process of evolution. We're trying to reinstate a situation that has been lost and erased and deleted from history. So you can't do that.... My first boss on the Hill was former and late Minister Jean Marchand, who Mr. Bagnell might have known.
You are almost old enough to be a senator, Mr. Bagnell.
He always said that you can't have a transatlantic ship turn on a dime; you have to take a direction. The important thing is to have a direction and to do it in a practical way, not to try to change your rules immediately. I don't think it's what I would advise you to do. That's not the way we did it in the Senate, and it has proved to be successful. It's how you do it practically.
After a while, as I say, it's part of a general effort of the overall system in Canada to reinstate aboriginal peoples' full participation in mainstream Canada. So I think that what you could do certainly is to follow suit, the way the Senate has done it, and I think you are going to help the Senate to continue to improve our approach to it. And we could share the capacity of the interpreter. There won't be one interpreter available for the chamber and one available for the Senate. We could pool those resources and share them so that we have a reasonable approach as we do with safety on the Hill, because we are in the process of adapting to a new situation. The government has stated that they fully endorse the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. You as a member of Parliament may remember that article 13 of the United Nations declaration reads “Indigenous peoples have the right to revitalize, use, develop and transmit to future generations their histories, languages, oral traditions.” It is within that trend that we put our efforts.