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.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
If interpretation of this type were to become more common, do you think there would be a large market of people who would get that education to be able to do that kind of work?
12:25 p.m.
Dene Language Revitilization Coach, As an Individual
I think so. Definitely.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Perfect. What about for translation as opposed to interpretation, so after the fact, in written records? Everything we do in the House is translated after the fact into English or French, as the case may be. Part of the challenge of interpretation in the House is ensuring that our written record reflects accurately the language spoken. If it's not English or French, it'll just say “...speaks in Dene”, for example. Are there a lot of written translators available, or is it the same three people?
12:25 p.m.
Dene Language Revitilization Coach, As an Individual
No, actually, more people can write than translate.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
That's good.
Your philosophical points in your opening statement were quite well taken. You made some very good points, but we are looking, of course, for practical and graduated solutions to implement things here. How would you see the first steps for us from your point of view?
12:25 p.m.
Dene Language Revitilization Coach, As an Individual
The first member spoke on this, saying that it will be difficult to do because of the array of languages in Canada—indigenous languages. I'm just coming from the viewpoint of Saskatchewan where we have Dene, Cree, Nakota, and Lakota. Looking at the bigger context, I can see that there would be difficulties in doing this.
I'm not exactly sure how we could overcome it unless we looked at, say, the bigger populations of languages first. Try it as a project with one of the bigger languages—say, Cree—because I know Cree has a bigger population than Dene. To give that a run and see how it works out, I think, would be the better way to go about it, rather than trying to find all these translators and setting ourselves up for failure. I think the better way to go would be to try to make it succeed for everyone.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Thank you for your very wise counsel.
Are there different dialects in Dene? If we had an interpreter, would some Dene people not be able to understand them?
12:30 p.m.
Dene Language Revitilization Coach, As an Individual
There's the “t” dialect and the “k” dialect. In our area, only one other community speaks the k dialect, and that's Fond du Lac. If you got a translator who was speaking only in t dialect, the other communities in Saskatchewan would understand. So it wouldn't be an issue in terms of that.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
John Nater Conservative Perth—Wellington, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Of the translators you're aware of in Saskatchewan, what type of work are they currently doing within Saskatchewan? Are they being used for court proceedings or within hospitals? What types of services are they providing locally and across Saskatchewan? What type of work are they undertaking?
12:30 p.m.
Dene Language Revitilization Coach, As an Individual
They do court proceeding translations. They do assembly translations, such as for the FSIN and their local tribal councils. At their assemblies they do simultaneous translation as well. They also work with industry in terms of doing translation work.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
John Nater Conservative Perth—Wellington, ON
That keeps them fairly busy, then? What I'm getting at is that we don't want to take someone away from somewhere else to fulfill our purposes. I'm looking at whether they have the availability and the time to maybe be flown to Ottawa for couple of days at a time for translation services. Do they have that availability?
12:30 p.m.
Dene Language Revitilization Coach, As an Individual
Some of these people work on a contract basis, so I think they would make themselves available. Speaking for myself, I'm taking a day off work to be here to speak to you. If they value the importance of what we're trying to do, I think they would make the effort and the time.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Thank you for taking the time off work.
Mr. Saganash, did you have something...? No.
Do the kids learn Dene in school?
12:30 p.m.
Dene Language Revitilization Coach, As an Individual
In the Dene communities I work in currently, three of the schools I work with have Dene language programming. One is actually an immersion school from nursery to grade 3. All the rest of the other schools teach it as core, which is 30 minutes a day.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Are there other questions from committee members? No.
What happens in the courts and the hospitals with elders who speak only Dene and not English or French?
12:30 p.m.
Dene Language Revitilization Coach, As an Individual
They usually have people come with them. If they are a witness in court, then the court provides a translator for them.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Would you like to make any closing remarks? I think we've exhausted all the questions.
12:30 p.m.
Dene Language Revitilization Coach, As an Individual
I just want to say that we have a group of probably 20 young people coming out of DTEP, the Dene teacher education program, in La Loche at the Clearwater River Dene Nation. Those people will be looking for jobs in two years.
You can see what I'm getting at here. I'm sure they would be open to doing this kind of work, because all of them are fluent speakers.
12:30 p.m.
Dene Language Revitilization Coach, As an Individual
In Dene? I could. Do you have a translator?
12:30 p.m.
Voices
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