Procedure and House Affairs Committee on April 5th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Good morning.

I call the meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 15 of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

The committee is meeting today to continue its study on the inclusion of indigenous languages on federal election ballots. That will be our focus for the first hour.

Before we go any further, I would like to welcome a new member to the committee, Marie‑Hélène Gaudreau.

Welcome to the committee, Ms. Gaudreau.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Good morning.

I'm pleased to be joining you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

I would also like to thank Mr. Therrien for all his hard work.

We have to elect a new vice-chair.

It has been moved by Ms. Romanado that Ms. Gaudreau be elected. Is everyone in agreement?

Since everyone is in agreement, I declare the motion carried and Ms. Gaudreau duly elected vice-chair of the committee.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

It's a privilege to be vice-chair of the committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Our first panel of witnesses comes to us from the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and the State of Alaska. They are Stephen Dunbar, chief electoral officer, Elections Northwest Territories; Dustin Fredlund, chief electoral officer, Elections Nunavut; and Samantha Mack, language assistance compliance manager of the Alaska Division of Elections. Welcome.

In that order, we will have quick five-minute opening comments. I'd just like to assure all of you that if you are providing substance for the committee to help us in this study, I will not cut you off, but if you are not providing us relevant information, I will probably get you to move on so that we can get to questions and answers. That's just so you know.

With up to five minutes, we will start with Mr. Dunbar.

Welcome.

[Stephen Dunbar, Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Northwest Territories]

Thank you, Madam Chair and committee members, for the invitation to appear before you today.

The Northwest Territories has 11 official languages: Chipewyan, Cree, English, French, Gwich'in, Inuinnaqtun, Inuktitut, Inuvialuktun, North Slavey, South Slavey and Tł̨ıchǫ. The ability to converse in an indigenous language ranges from under 200 for Inuktitut to over 2,200 for Tł̨ıchǫ. While these numbers may seem low in a national context, it is important to note that, in our smallest communities, most residents speak an indigenous language.

Our governing legislation, the Elections and Plebiscites Act, currently makes no provision for anything other than the candidate's name and photo on the ballot. As the committee may know, there are no political parties represented in the Northwest Territories legislative assembly, and efforts to introduce party politics have, thus far, been unsuccessful.

In 2016, the territorial government introduced amendments to the Vital Statistics Act, to allow for names to be registered using indigenous characters and diacritics, instead of the Roman alphabet. While these amendments have not yet been brought into force, some residents have started reclaiming indigenous names. As one member said, during the debate on the amendments:

...it also sets the stage for self-identity of First Nations people. You know, the irony of our existence in North America and the world stage is that we all have Anglicized names and Christian names. Our culture is not really reflected in our English names. So this provides an opportunity for people to distinguish themselves as First Nations and Indigenous First Nations around the world.

Under our legislation, a nomination form requires a candidate to indicate the given name and surname by which they are commonly known in their community. There is no requirement to present government-issued documentation, and the ballot would reflect the name as stated in the nomination paper. Figure 1 is an example of what our ballot would look like with indigenous names.

The 1992 plebiscite on the boundary between Nunavut and the Northwest Territories had the plebiscite question translated into 10 of the 11 languages, with Cree being the exception, as interpretation could not be provided in the plebiscite time frame. The proclamation and instructions for voters were also produced in 10 languages. Depending on what languages were commonly spoken in the electoral district, the ballot could have up to four languages included on it. Figure 2 has the English, French and Inuktitut ballot that was used in the eastern Arctic electoral districts.

I'll conclude my comments with some of the issues we face in producing materials in official languages. The languages bureau that was used in the 1992 plebiscite no longer exists, so there's no longer a one-stop shop to have materials produced into all official languages. We are reliant upon individual contractors who may not have the time to quickly turn around materials. The cost to translate materials can also be significantly different, depending on the contractor's rates. There may be considerable variation in terminology between dialects of the same language, so not all speakers may understand the materials produced in that official language. Figure 3 includes examples from three dialects of North Slavey from the Sahtu region, all translating the word “vote”.

Finally, care must be taken to ensure that proper orthographic tools are installed on computers to support indigenous fonts. The default settings in word processors can present indigenous fonts using incorrect diacritical marks. Figure 4 has some examples of what can happen when using default settings when opening a document.

I would be pleased to respond to any questions the committee may have. Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you very much for that insightful information.

We will now move on to Mr. Fredlund.

Welcome.

[Dustin Fredlund, Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Nunavut]

Qujannamiik Iksivautaq.

Thank you, Madam Chair and committee members, for the invitation to appear before you as part of the study on the inclusion of indigenous languages on election ballots.

I am honoured to share with you some of the work that my office does in promoting and advancing Inuktut in Nunavut’s democracy, not only as an obligation under the Nunavut Elections Act, but simply because Nunavummiut rely on us for information in their own languages.

An important tool in the voting process are the ballots upon which we express our democratic choice. Our ballots include candidates' names in any of Nunavut’s official languages, French, English and Inuktut, which we've heard from some of the previous speakers include Inuktitut, which is written in syllabics, and Inuinnaqtun, which is written in roman orthography, the common alphabet that we use in English and French.

Inuktut names are personal and deeply rooted in Inuit customs and culture. We rely on candidates for the spelling and transliteration of their names. These are provided to our office during the declaration period and are included on the ballot.

Fortunately, my office does have the capacity in-house to ensure that each name written in Inuktitut syllabics accurately depicts the candidate’s choice. This capacity is also necessary to decipher the write-in ballots, to ensure that the voter’s choice—written in any official language, including syllabics—is accurately recorded. I have provided the committee with a few examples that depict our multi-language ballots.

Koana. I welcome any questions you have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you very much. That was excellent.

Samantha Mack, we will go to you for your opening comments.

[Samantha Mack, Language Assistance Compliance Manager, Alaska Division of Elections]

Uvlaasatkun. Thank you, and good morning.

My name is Samantha Mack. I am Unangax̂, from King Cove, Alaska. I come to this work in language access from a previous background in academics, focusing on the self-determination of indigenous peoples. This work is very important to me.

If you don't already know, Alaska is currently undergoing the implementation of ranked-choice voting for the first time in our voting process. As such, my department has recently launched a vast educational campaign, which is being carried out in nine Alaska native languages, in addition to Spanish, English and Tagalog .

For us, the inclusion of indigenous languages in the elections process very much does not end with simple inclusion in the ballot, but is all-encompassing, including items like outreach advertising and all public communications from the division of elections. We also utilize a panel model wherein multiple speakers of each indigenous language meet in a panel to translate together. We feel that this is a best practice in terms of indigenous translations, and it works out quite well for us in regard to accuracy and things like that.

Much like Alaska, Canada's role in the colonization of its indigenous peoples and the ongoing impacts of that mean that the inclusion of indigenous languages in the electoral process is a really important first step. I look forward to this discussion.

Thank you for inviting me.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you very much. We also are looking forward to this great discussion.

We are going to start with six-minute rounds, starting with Mrs. Block followed by Mr. Turnbull.

We will then go to Ms. Gaudreau, followed by Ms. Idlout.

Ms. Block, you have six minutes.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Firstly, thank you to our witnesses for joining us today, as well as for this study.

Through you, Madam Chair, I would direct my first questions to Mr. Dunbar.

I'm imagining that there are multiple indigenous languages represented in the different ridings in the Northwest Territories. If that is the case, what is the process for producing ballots in multiple indigenous languages?

[Stephen Dunbar]

The ballots in the Northwest Territories only have the candidate's name and photo on them. We don't have the requirement to print anything other than the name and photo on the ballot. We are in the process of trying to make sure that we have a lot of e-voter information published in the indigenous languages spoken in that electoral district.

If we were looking at the Mackenzie Delta electoral district, the languages there would be Gwich'in and Inuvialuktun. If we were looking at the Monfwi electoral district, we would only be looking at Tł̨ıchǫ and English.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Thank you very much for that.

What types of materials would you be producing in order to provide information to the constituents?

[Stephen Dunbar]

We would be producing signs that say “vote here” and “polling place” in the various languages.

There will be information about what you require to vote. If there is a voter ID requirement.... For instance, an elector here must show proof of their identity and residency. Obviously, a driver's licence or government identity card would be optimal, but in a lot of our small communities, fewer than half of the residents will have government-issued ID. We would be looking at a health card in conjunction with something else, whether that's a utility bill, a lease, a mortgage or a hunter's card.

Those are the things we would be looking at, and we will have posters produced in each language outlining what materials you can bring to prove your identity.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Thank you very much.

Through you, Madam Chair, you also identified that there were some issues with regard to the timelines and dealing with multiple contractors.

Can you define for us how you have mitigated some of those issues?

[Stephen Dunbar]

At the moment, we haven't really mitigated any of them. We are in the process of gearing up for the 2023 general election. We are starting this work right now. I am meeting with our languages commissioner next week to start laying out our preliminary plans and getting some feedback from her on what steps we can take.

One of the examples I used was about the different dialects in North Slavey. This language is spoken in a region of the territory that is over 280,000 square kilometres, and these communities are fairly well spread out, so we want to ensure that whatever materials we produce will be understood by electors in each of those communities. We may need to look at producing things in each dialect at that point.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Thank you for that.

I believe the next question I'm going to ask could be answered by either Mr. Dunbar or Mr. Fredlund.

Could you describe for us how long your official election periods are, typically?

[Stephen Dunbar]

I can start and pass it on to my colleague.

Our elections are 29 days long by law.

[Dustin Fredlund]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Our elections are 35 days.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

They're thirty-five days. Okay.

By what point are candidates required to be officially registered? Is there a certain time frame before the elections are going to take place? When do you have to have your candidates in place in order to be able to produce all of the materials?

[Stephen Dunbar]

For the Northwest Territories, because we don't have political parties, they have until the 25th day before polling to get their nomination papers in to be listed on the ballot. That's the first five days of the campaign.

[Dustin Fredlund]

We were similar to NWT when we split. We just lengthened our election period, but it's the same concept. It's in the first five days, so between 35 days and 30 days prior to the election.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

My last question that I would put to you both, through the chair, is what sort of feedback have you been given about language being a barrier for federal elections?

[Stephen Dunbar]

I can't speak to any feedback we have received about federal elections. We had a by-election here in February and some of the feedback we received was because we did not have time to produce the materials in Chipewyan. That was a barrier for some of the elders to be able to cast their vote. Due to a COVID outbreak, that election was done by mail-in ballot.