Procedure and House Affairs Committee on April 17th, 2018

[John Quirke]

With difficulty, yes. The Inuktituk speakers will have an understanding of Inuinnaqtun. There will be big differences in the translation of a word. For example, our languages commissioner in Nunavut is Inuinnaqtun. One of the things she said to me when we hired her was that she was going to have to brush up on her Inuktituk because of the differences, besides brushing up on her French.

When the Inuinnaqtun people are speaking—and from my own personal experience because my wife is Inuk—the Inuktitut speakers have to listen very carefully to what they're saying. That's the same with the Inuinnaqtun speakers too. They all have to listen very carefully to what the Inuktituk speakers are saying, because there are differences in how they interpret a word.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

You went through and told us which translators you have there, in which booths. Are there translators for Inuinnaqtun and Inuktitut and the reverse when the legislators are sitting?

[John Quirke]

Yes, it's the third booth in the picture. I should mention too that the Inuinnaqtun translators only come for the sittings of the House. We do not bring them in for the meetings of the standing committees, the in camera ones, unless a member asks us. In the first assembly, the use of the Inuinnaqtun language was pretty strong. We had a couple of members who spoke it freely, so when we had our committee meetings, we would bring them in. For the past couple of assemblies, Inuinnaqtun was not often used in the committee meetings. The Inuinnaqtun speaker was actually the premier, but he wouldn't be part of those meetings.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

One of the issues we face when dealing with this at the level of the federal Parliament is that there are some indigenous languages, of which Inuktitut is the star example, that are doing very well in terms of remaining not only the mother tongue but the preferred home language—which I think is the most robust way of measuring the health of a language—for young people as well as for older people. We also have languages that are in peril and some that are in catastrophic decline, when we take the country as a whole.

I know the situation of Inuktitut, but with regard to Inuinnaqtun, is that a language that is endangered? Is it robust in terms of its demographic prospects? I'm asking you a demographer's question, not a value judgment question, from the point of view of the kinds of measures of peril that a linguist would use.

[John Quirke]

I would say it's in danger. We're talking Kugluktuk and Cambridge Bay. Kugluktuk used to be called Copper Mine. There is a move to try to make it stronger. I mentioned that our language commissioner is Inuinnaqtun. That's going to help a lot and will send a message to those two communities that their language is important.

At the local level, there is of course a strong desire to preserve and promote it. The Inuktitut language, like you said, is very strong in all the other communities. Preservation of the language is very important to the culture. What I'm seeing of course is the pride. There's a lot of pride out there, with people saying, “I can speak Inuktitut. It's my mother tongue.” We've seen that all across Nunavut, especially outside of Iqaluit. I just came back from Pond Inlet, where we had a full caucus retreat, and I ran into and talked to any number of children who spoke Inuktitut. They are proud of their language.

It's going to survive, and with Inuinnaqtun, I'm just hoping there is a movement to ensure that it will survive. It has its difficulties.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

I noticed that the Hansard you handed out is available in English and Inuktitut, but not in Inuinnaqtun. Is Hansard recorded in written form in Inuinnaqtun?

[John Quirke]

No.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Is that just a cost issue?

[John Quirke]

We never looked at it as a cost issue. Back in 1999, it was a question of Inuktitut being the dominant language in the 23 or 25 communities, so we went with Inuktitut. In terms of getting people who could translate Inuinnaqtun, the number of people out there is very small.

It's been syllabics and English. If it ever becomes a standard Inuktitut language, which would allow all of Nunavut to read syllabics, then it probably would happen.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

I forgot to welcome Mr. Morrissey to the committee.

When you said you had a caucus retreat, was that the entire legislature—I know there are no parties—or was it just the cabinet or just the opposition?

[John Quirke]

At Pond Inlet, it was the full caucus—all 22 members.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Just so the members know, in some of the territories, because they only sit 35 days, unlike us, they have a lot of committee meetings that are not at the same time as the legislature is sitting.

We'll go on to Mr. Saganash.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's a great pleasure to be back here.

Welcome to Mr. Quirke, and thank you for your contribution. Your experience in Nunavut will certainly be of great assistance to the study this committee is doing right now.

I just want to clarify from the outset a figure that you mentioned: the $3.7 million for fiscal year 2015-16. You said that represents 20% of your budget. Is that correct?

[John Quirke]

The figure that's in the document covers a couple of fiscal years.

During the last fiscal year ending March 31, 2017, I spent $980,795. That figure represents—and I'm sorry, I have to apologize, I gave the wrong percentage—21.9% of funding that I have direct control over. We have a budget of $26.8 million. I take away all the members' salaries, their pensions, premiums, all that stuff, my salary, and that of my staff and all the independent officers. The amount of money left over as discretionary that I can manage is $4.4 million—$4,474,000—and $980,000 of that money was spent for language services.

Like I mentioned before, we're doing it in English and Inuktitut. I know the figure in the House of Commons for English and French is much, much higher.

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

There is another challenge that we may face in this regard, and you mentioned this in your presentation, and I want to quote you: “The single greatest capacity challenge that we face is the very small number of human beings alive today who are able to provide quality Inuit language....”

You qualify that quality. How important is that?

[John Quirke]

It's very important. We all know that something is always lost in interpretation from one language to another.

My real experience from day one has been, “Oh, I didn't say that. Your interpreter got it wrong”, or vice versa. The dialect differences are significant enough to cause some grief.

There have been many times, especially in the second and third assemblies, where the quality of the interpretation was sufficient to cause a point of order. Now, let me explain a point of order—which I know you're all familiar with—but for our points of order, you can do a point of order the day after. One of the reasons you can do a point of order the day after, or even two days after, is that we have to go back to see what, in fact, was said in the translation.

I remember one case in the third assembly when a retired member had said something, and some member said, “Oh, I think I have a point of order”. I had three interpreters in my office going through the audio/video. What did he actually say? Three of them were all looking and saying, “He said, no, no”. At the end of the day we finally got it resolved, but that's what I mean by quality. You can get the highest quality interpreters around, but if your dialect doesn't agree with the dialect of the member who is speaking, that's what we ran into.

We always look for high quality, no matter what.

Thank you.

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

I get it.

This brings me back to a question of the four rates that you have for interpreters. You said in your testimony that “we” judge their competence. Who is “we” in this context?

[John Quirke]

Either me or my deputy clerk and my clerk assistant, who are both Inuit, and the members. The members will let us know how well the interpretation is going, and we have faced situations where we knew we did not have the right person doing the job, so we get that type of feedback.

We get feedback from the public. Those are usually dialect issues, but the feedback is from my own Inuit staff and the members themselves, and like I said, that would be the best feedback also.

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

Finally, obviously our challenges are going to be greater, because I don't think eventually we'll have 338 indigenous MPs in this House of Commons. I would hope that would happen, but that's going to be for another time, after the revolution, but....

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

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

I think those challenges are attenuated by the fact that, for instance, there are about 10 or 12 indigenous MPs right now. I don't know how many of them speak fluently their language. I do, but I don't know how many others speak their language fluently, so I think the needs can be less in that sense.

I notice the syllabics. My mum can read syllabics, and I gave her Inuktitut text one day in syllabics, and she could read it without understanding what she was reading. Are syllabics taught in Nunavut?

[John Quirke]

I'm sorry—are they what?

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

Are syllabics taught in school?

[John Quirke]

Yes, they are. The challenge, of course, and what the government is trying to do, is to standardize Inuktitut because of the dialects. I'm not super familiar with the education system because I don't have children going to school there, but from kindergarten to high school there are several levels of the Inuktitut language provided and taught. We found that a lot of members could speak the language perfectly but couldn't read syllabics. I know it's difficult when I look at it, but I know it is taught at home and in the schools.

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

Thank you.