Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and through you I would like to thank the witnesses for being with us today.
This has been excellent testimony for us and, in fact, will help feed a subsequent study that we will eventually be doing in terms of the 44th election. I think this is very beneficial for us to understand not just the question of indigenous languages on ballots, but also the barriers for indigenous peoples to participate in the democratic process.
I want to follow up with respect to a question one of my colleagues had when the Chief Electoral Officer was here. She inquired about what the Chief Electoral Officer was doing in between elections to prepare.
Based on the testimony from Ms. Aariak, it is clear that documentation for municipal and territorial elections, for instance, a “vote here” sign giving directions, already exists, so it's not a question of reinventing the wheel. The information is already available.
Ms. Aariak, you mentioned that you have been in correspondence with the Chief Electoral Officer. Perhaps this would be more a question for the chief electoral officer for Elections Nunavut, but has there been any proactive approach to reach out to your organization to get assistance in making sure that documentation that needs to be translated for federal elections is also in line with what you're doing? It strikes me that the Chief Electoral Officer did not have a poster—and you mentioned this in example one—directing voters where to vote in advance polls for a federal election when it exists at both municipal and provincial.
Even more disturbing for me is example 5, where it said a “masks required” sign posted on a door during the election was only in English. I quickly went on the Public Health Agency of Canada website to look up information regarding coronavirus, and there was a drop-down menu where I could select the Inuktut language and proceed to print a poster in the official languages of Nunavut about mask requirements and so on.
If this information already exists, how is it that the Chief Electoral Officer cannot proactively make sure that this information is provided to you?
I am quite concerned that for some reason this is not happening. I would hope, as my colleague said in the last meeting with the Chief Electoral Officer, that in between elections this outreach and pretty basic googling is happening so this is not an issue at the next federal election.
Would you and any other witnesses like to comment on that?