Evidence of meeting #97 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 languages.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Director General, Citizen Participation, Department of Canadian Heritage
One area that could perhaps inform would be the New Zealand situation with the Maori. I don't have that data, but I think that could be a good example of a really good, yet complicated question.
Conservative
John Nater Conservative Perth—Wellington, ON
Thank you again to our witnesses for the very informative discussion so far.
I want to start with a couple of more specific questions on most of the data that was provided by Statistics Canada. I see some very small numbers among them. The one that jumped out was Southern East Cree, which has 40 people with the ability to conduct a conversation.
I'm curious. Do you have data that goes a little more deeply into the geographic distribution? For example, 40 people seems like one extended family, potentially. Is that an interpretation, a very small familial group?
Assistant Director, Social and Aboriginal Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
Yes. Of course, we could provide that kind of information, but we always have to be careful because when we look at the Cree language families overall, we know for the most part they are concentrated. We find 28% in Saskatchewan, 24% in Alberta, and 22% in Manitoba. They could be dispersed. It depends whether these 40 people are all located in the same small area. We would have to double-check and look at this because then it creates a problem trying to understand more detailed information.
Analyst, Social and Aboriginal Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
I want to add as well that there is a Cree NOS there. That means Cree “not otherwise specified”. That's someone writing just Cree on the questionnaire.
As we had mentioned, on the electronic questionnaire they would have been prompted to be more specific, and that's why we get better detail like Swampy Cree or Moose Cree.
While it says Southern East Cree is 40, it may well be larger than that because we have 86,000 people sitting in that other category.
Conservative
John Nater Conservative Perth—Wellington, ON
That's very good.
Beyond that, certainly one of the challenges we're going to hear from the translation bureau in the weeks to come, and the union representing them as well, is the ability of qualified professionals. Again, knowing that you can't get into extensive details in a census, do you have a sense of the educational background of the users of specific languages, what level of education they may have, and where that potential pool of translators may be?
Assistant Director, Social and Aboriginal Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
Absolutely. Again, the challenge is whether you want to focus specifically on very small groups; then it becomes a problem. For larger groups, yes, we have the information sometimes on the main level, the major field of study. We have where they work, types of industry, and occupation. Yes, we can certainly make this data available.
Conservative
John Nater Conservative Perth—Wellington, ON
Thank you.
Quickly, to Mr. Fizet and Mr. Lussier, in the conclusion of your opening comments you talked a little about standardization of systems and some general solidifying of some of the languages, looking forward to some of the technological advances.
We all use Google Translate from time to time. Is there a similar program in place that would do that, not for oral communication, but for written communication, some kind of service being provided from the IT side?
Director General, Citizen Participation, Department of Canadian Heritage
A number of groups in the media sector are very interested in this. Google is working with the First Peoples' Cultural Council in B.C. As you know, B.C. has the majority of indigenous languages. Apple is also doing work. In our program, we support applications being driven by indigenous people who have determined that to get their kids or the younger generation, that's what's going to be attractive.
So there are. The reason we wanted to put that in is the interpretation possibilities you're studying I think are going to be for a range of age groups. Like any other youthful group, indigenous youth are hooked, although there are certain cases...because of the remoteness difficulties.
If you have interpretation services, or however you want to see it, make sure there's that technological piece because you are probably going to get a buy-in.
To answer your question, yes. There's a great interest from a number.... Just from our program, we can speak of quite a few.
Conservative
John Nater Conservative Perth—Wellington, ON
That's good. So there are some partnerships going on as well, beyond internal to government, but externally.
Director General, Citizen Participation, Department of Canadian Heritage
Oh, yes. Some of these big groups are very interested because that technology can actually, in some cases, circumvent difficulties in trying to get some interpretation because, again, of the remoteness or the lack of language interlocutors.
Conservative
John Nater Conservative Perth—Wellington, ON
That would be useful, potentially down the road, English and French to the indigenous languages—
Director General, Citizen Participation, Department of Canadian Heritage
Yes, and some right now are going directly from indigenous to English or French, or even indigenous to indigenous.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
I will give an example of what happens in my riding. My kids are six and nine, and they go to a school, Whitehorse Elementary, where maybe 10% are aboriginal, but they take Southern Tutchone lessons. Everyone in the school takes them every week. It's my daughter's favourite course. We've also just recently funded the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations in a mixed community, to have a day care that has total immersion in the Southern Tutchone language. Whether you're English or French, you'll only be speaking Southern Tutchone in that day care. That'll be an interesting experiment.
I have one last question. Do you know of any comparison to languages outside Canada? Are there any words similar to languages in Asia? I think the Navajo are very close to the Athabascan Dene language. Are you aware of any words in Canadian aboriginal languages that are found in languages somewhere else in the world?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Citizenship, Heritage and Regions, Department of Canadian Heritage
I think the only example that comes to mind is the commonality of Inuit speakers of Canada and Greenland, Alaska, and Russia. Other than that, I don't think there is.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Thank you very much. This has been very helpful and very interesting.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Before we break, I just have a couple of really quick housekeeping items.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
The first one is that we got a brief from the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba. I wonder if we could communicate with them to thank them for their brief but also to ask them if they could give us some more information about how they handle the use of the French language in their proceedings. It wasn't really something that was addressed in that.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
The second thing was if we could see if our analyst could look for uses of Inuktitut in the Senate proceedings, and then whether there was any indication of the type of interpretation used.
