Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Feb. 1st, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

I would like to call this meeting to order.

I welcome you all to the 48th meeting of the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs.

We acknowledge that we are meeting on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people.

Our meeting today will take place in a hybrid format.

For those participating virtually, I would like to outline a few rules to follow. You may speak in the official language of your choice. Interpretation services are available for this meeting in French, English and Inuktitut in the first hour, and Plains Cree in the second hour.

You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of using the globe icon for “floor”, “English” or “French”. Please select your language now, and if interpretation is lost, let us know and we'll try to get it back.

Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. If you are on the video conference, please click on the microphone icon to unmute yourself. For those in the room, your microphone will be controlled as normal by the proceedings and verification officer.

Please address all comments to the chair.

When speaking, please speak slowly and clearly. When you are not speaking, your microphone should be on mute. With regard to a speaking list, the committee clerk and I will do our best to maintain a consolidated order of speaking for all members, although we have already pre-established that for today.

I have just one housekeeping matter before we start. The next study, as per the motion adopted on November 21, 2022, is the study of improving graduation rates and successful outcomes for indigenous students, also known as the education study. Please submit your witness lists, organized by priority and by party, to the clerk by February 8.

With that, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on November 21, the committee is resuming its study of indigenous languages. This is our third meeting.

Today, for our first panel, I'd like to welcome R.J. Simpson, Government House Leader, Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, and Minister of Justice for the Government of the Northwest Territories, appearing virtually.

We will also hear Dr. Megan Lukaniec, who is a linguist from the Huron‑Wendat National Council, via videoconference.

We also have Dr. Ida Bear of the University of Manitoba, also by video conference.

For our witnesses, you will have five minutes each to make an introductory set of comments, and then we will proceed with a first round of questions. Try to keep your speaking remarks to five minutes to allow the most time possible for questions.

With that, Minister Simpson, if you are ready, you have the floor for five minutes.

We're not hearing you, Minister.

We'll go to the second witness, and perhaps we can fix the problem in the meantime.

Dr. Lukaniec, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Dr. Megan Lukaniec, Linguist, Huron-Wendat Nation Council]

Thank you very much.

Kwe aweti'.

My name is Dr. Megan Lukaniec. I'm a member of the Huron-Wendat Nation situated in Wendake, Quebec. I am a linguist for our nation.

I am honoured to be here to discuss the Indigenous Languages Act, and the impacts of that act on our community and our language.

Our language, called Wendat, became dormant over a century ago, but since 2007, we have been reawakening our language through the careful analysis of archival documentation.

As of right now, for our nation, there has been no positive impact of the passing of the Indigenous Languages Act. No funding model has changed, this funding was and still is project-based. Furthermore, we have not been contacted by or in communication with the office of the commissioner of indigenous languages.

The only change that we have experienced with the passing of this act is an increase of service work. We have been called upon to participate in numerous consultations sessions, both prior to and after the act. Despite many of the important and insightful comments that I have heard in these sessions since 2018, I have not seen any of these changes implemented thus far.

I humbly present three recommendations to this committee.

The first recommendation is to pass amendments to this act since it has no teeth and is more or less symbolic. I'll give you an example of that. Paragraph 5(d) reads that the purpose of the act is to “establish measures to facilitate the provision of adequate, sustainable and long-term funding”, but that's actually not the same as committing to provide adequate, sustainable and long-term funding.

Right now, that means that this funding is dependent on the goodwill of the federal government in power. It is also very non-committal in terms of language rights. We need a commitment that we have the right to educate our youth in our language, and it's especially important here in Quebec with the passing of Bill 96. These rights are mentioned, but they are not explicitly stated in the act.

I also would point you to the legal brief of Karihwakè:ron Tim Thompson of Yellowhead Institute, who provides some thoughtful critique of that.

My second recommendation for this is to change the funding model. Get rid of short-term project funding and its associated problematic measures.

Prior to funding from Canadian Heritage, we actually had a five-year grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. It was a partnership between our nation and Université Laval. We had exponential growth during that period of time since, for the first time, we could plan our activities for five years rather than a single year or even two. We could also modify the project activities to fit our actual needs, which often change from the needs that we estimate at the time of submitting a grant application.

Since we started depending on funding from Canadian Heritage, that was roughly in 2012, our language work has really stagnated. We are stuck on a roller coaster of a grant cycle, and in some ways I believe that this funding has actually set us back rather than moved us forward over the past decade.

The application processing delays are inexcusably long. We once waited 11 months from the time of submission to the time of acceptance of the grant, and of course the deadlines don't change necessarily. You have to ask for extensions. There's also very little flexibility in changing the project activities or the timelines, and there's no recognition of how their delays impact us in our work and in our language planning.

The bigger reality is that we don't want to do projects. The work that we're doing in our community to revitalize our language is not a project. It shouldn't need to be packaged into something new and shiny each grant cycle, with deliverables that need to be sent to Canadian Heritage after the fact.

Instead, we really hope that the federal government could fund full operating budgets for a period of at least five years to reawaken and revitalize our languages, and not projects with deliverables that are counted according to metrics designed by someone else.

My third recommendation for you is to increase the funding to at least match what is provided to official languages. Dr. Onowa McIvor talks about this very issue in her 2013 article. She says, “it takes greater resources to rebuild something than it does to destroy it.” With amounts of up to $300,000 per year, the funding we receive now is more of a token of support than actual support.

We know that our languages are not being funded at the same level as English and French. We're being told as much during these consultation sessions when we are being asked to provide criteria that will be used to choose amongst the best grant applications. Please don't make us compete against one another for essential funding that is needed to support our languages.

We need this funding to undo the harm the federal government and its other colluding agents have caused to our language. We would like to have at least the same as if not more than what is provided to English and French, because it does cost more to rebuild.

In conclusion, it's been almost four years since the act has passed. We have been waiting patiently. We are still without any adequate, sustainable, recurring and long-term funding for our language. The current funding amounts and current funding model are both unacceptable and will not permit us to effect real change in our community in terms of language revitalization.

We are now coming up against a funding gap since we had a two-year grant from Canadian Heritage that will end on March 31. There are no other funding calls that are available despite the fact we were told that these new funding models would come into effect in the spring of last year, in 2022.

I implore you to act fast because we're doing all we can on our end to sustain and nourish our language, but we really need the federal government to commit itself to help us rebuild from the damage they caused our language. We need this financial support, and we need it now.

That is all.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Dr. Lukaniec.

We'll now go to Minister Simpson.

Minister, you have five minutes.

[R.J. Simpson, Member of the Legislative Assembly, Hay River North, Government House Leader, Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Minister of Justice, Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories]

Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Dánet’eh, dze nezì.

Thank you for inviting me here today.

The Northwest Territories is the only political region in Canada that recognizes 11 official languages. Of these languages, nine are indigenous: Dëne Sųłıné Yatıé, nēhiyawēwin, Dinjii Zhu’ Ginjik, Inuinnaqtun, Inuktitut, Inuvialuktun, Dene Kǝdǝ́, Dene Zhatié and Tłı̨chǫ Yatıı̀, with many different dialects throughout our 33 communities.

The NWT Official Languages Act sets out the roles and responsibilities of the ministerially appointed language boards that represent the 11 official language communities, the Languages Commissioner and the Government of the Northwest Territories, and it provides legal protection to assist in preserving culture as expressed through language. The act states that everyone has a right to receive government services in the languages they speak.

Each of our indigenous languages articulates the ways of knowing, being, doing and believing that are unique to their own communities and histories. This is why it is so important to work to ensure that our children and youth retain a strong connection to their language and who they are. It is our responsibility, as a government and as individual citizens, to protect, strengthen and promote our languages to ensure that we are a territory in which indigenous languages are supported, respected and thriving.

The Government of the Northwest Territories provides approximately $15 million per year to indigenous governments in the NWT—communities and education bodies. Combined with the $5.9 million from the 2021-24 Canada-Northwest Territories Agreement on Indigenous Languages, the GNWT distributes approximately $21 million towards the promotion, preservation and revitalization of indigenous languages each year.

Funding provided through the GNWT is used to support language revitalization programs for individuals and communities, and is also distributed directly to governments, communities and education bodies to develop and provide their own language revitalization programs.

Our work is guided by input from our language partners, and over the years, we have learned that this coordination is essential to the success of achieving our shared vision. We have built relationships based on trust and transparency to find solutions that work within the unique context of the Northwest Territories.

The federal Indigenous Languages Act provides room for a variety of indigenous language revitalization and protection efforts, and, from a legislative perspective, aligns well with the NWT's Official Languages Act. However, the GNWT would like to see improved coordination of funding for language revitalization and service delivery initiatives to improve efficiency and better support strategic objectives in our territory.

Although additional support for language revitalization is welcome, the current disparate approach to program funding has contributed to issues of duplication and persistent capacity issues that limit revitalization work. To be clear, I am not advocating for the redirection of funds from indigenous governments to the Government of Northwest Territories, but for enhanced coordination. The Government of Northwest Territories would like to work more closely with Canada and indigenous government partners to support strategic objectives, create efficiencies and help address the lack of capacity across our language communities.

Although we see general alignment with our legislation, several areas of the Indigenous Languages Act at this time are not clearly defined, such as the use of the terms such as “support”, “access to services”, “sufficient demand” and “capacity”. Not having these terms properly defined makes the impact of these requirements hard to judge.

The Government of Northwest Territories understands that our indigenous languages need support, particularly those spoken in rural indigenous communities. Beyond dollars, capacity issues must be strategically addressed for revitalization funding to be effectively spent. For instance, currently only two out of our seven regional indigenous language coordinator positions are filled across indigenous governments in the Northwest Territories, which poses significant challenges to implementing revitalization programs across our territory. Greater coordination between Canada, the GNWT and indigenous governments could help identify and target such issues in a more systematic and strategic way.

I would like to thank the committee for inviting me to provide feedback on this important initiative, and I look forward to continued coordination of funding for language revitalization and service delivery initiatives with the Government of Canada.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Minister Simpson.

We will now go to Dr. Ida Bear of the University of Manitoba.

You have five minutes.

[Ida Bear, Teacher of Indigenous languages (Cree and Ojibwe), As an Individual]

[Witness spoke in Swampy Cree]

[English]

My western name is Ida Bear. I am at the University of Winnipeg, not the University of Manitoba.

I just want to do a qualifying statement. In 1967, I got involved in language and culture work. I remember sitting down on a Saturday afternoon with a few other people who were concerned about our languages in our communities—and we're separated, north and south. The south of Manitoba has better access to resources; the north does not.

At the time, in 1966-67, our schools were still federal schools. It was not until 1973-74 that we began to take control of our schools.

I have seen history in the making. I am in my winter years. I have seen development over the long time I've been a schoolteacher in the public school system. I have also been teaching for many years at the post-secondary level. One thing that I want to congratulate the federal government on is the languages act. It's been a long time coming.

When we were sitting down, eight of us, we were saying, “We should have our languages protected, like French”. It was more like wishful thinking at the time because nobody was listening to us when we were sitting at the department of education of the provincial government. We were teaching English as a second language, and then we had bilingual programs. All the kids who came to school spoke the language. We knew that the language was safe and healthy in the communities if the little ones came to school at age four.

Fast-forward to 2023. You can go to any school in Manitoba, and you will not have one student speaking their language, whether it's Dakota, Dene, Inuktitut, Michif, Cree—my language—Ojibwa-Cree or Ojibwa. We have seven language groups in Manitoba, and we're divided, north and south.

As a community person, and also as a grandmother and a great-grandmother, I was really quite surprised when I got an invitation to appear before the standing committee. I said, “I don't know anything about what happened with legislation. All I know was that in 2018 and 2019, there was discussion about the languages act and what it would do.”

Certainly, it's not as efficient because it's only been in operation since 2019. The work of language disintegration and culture has been in the making for 500 years, and so with this languages act, I sat back and said, “Hmm. It's going to take a while before we see progress.” I know because it took a long time for us to get moving in looking at language and culture, working with our communities to say that language is important and so is culture.

I'm the last remaining person in my generation from where I come from who has knowledge of language and culture as it was before modernization took place. We have different things happening in indigenous communities, and it's all modern. I think people from the past would be very shocked to see the kinds of things that are being done in languages and culture—good intentions.

With that, I wanted to make the point that many of us have been in this work a long time. I said, “Finally, we have a languages act”, but it's too bad I didn't know anything about it after it was passed and how the funding was taking place.

Yesterday and today, I quickly got some information. Thank God for the Internet that you can access information as quickly as you can for languages information. I looked for the Nisga'a. As a student, I loved Frank Calder, because he had the Nisga'a language and the elders recognized that they could go to court and use their oral history. I'm a storyteller by trade. I said, “Yay.”

Years down the road, the Nisga'a got quite a lot of money for documentation, and they have done the process with Thomas Berger and so forth when they were negotiating for their land claims. We didn't have that here in Manitoba. It was just our little groups that got together and said that language was so important. We initiated the bilingual program in 1973 and ran that for about five, six or seven years with the federal government and the provincial government doing a joint program. That was with Title IV in the 1960s in the States. A whole bunch of people went down to Rough Rock and Window Rock to look at the bilingual program.

The scariest thing is that we were trying to teach English. None of the children in our schools spoke English. Fast-forward to today, and none of the kids speak their indigenous language.

We do have funding. I have just a few seconds, and I have a list here. I think there has to be a better coordination in looking at the funding proposals. It has to be tighter. Also, the community, and I don't mean the chief and council or the mayor's office or anything.... I'm talking about community people. They have to be made aware of what language planning is and of the role of language, and then get themselves organized and structured so that they can be better able to have efficient language retrieval programs. Also, the last point—and my time is going here—is the Internet. We have really big issues with Internet service for our northern communities. I teach at a virtual high school here, and our communities cannot get online because they can't access the Internet to hook up with us where we teach language and culture.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Dr. Bear, and my apologies for getting your university wrong. It's the University of Winnipeg.

We'll now go to the first round of questions, and we'll begin with Mr. Melillo for six minutes.

[Eric Melillo, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all our witnesses for joining us today for this important discussion and for being part of this study. I thank all of you for your testimony.

So far what has struck me is that each of the opening remarks really touched on the coordination aspect of the programs from the federal government.

Dr. Lukaniec, you mentioned the lack of a positive impact from the Indigenous Languages Act. You mentioned the need for language rights and passing some amendments to sort of beef that up.

I find this very interesting for a number of reasons and very concerning for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that we've seen a lot of reports from the Parliamentary Budget Officer and the Auditor General recently pertaining to Indigenous Services and how, over the last number of years, there have been a lot of resources and dollars allocated but not necessarily a commensurate increase in the results. I think that's a major gap we're experiencing that we're seeing across the country. Each of you pointed that out, and quite rightly so.

With that in mind, in thinking about the results and the outcomes that we obviously need to be striving toward, Dr. Lukaniec, I'll come back to you again, since you started off. You mentioned the need to pass some amendments for the Indigenous Languages Act in order to strengthen it. I'm wondering if you could speak in more detail to some of those specific amendments.

[Dr. Megan Lukaniec]

Yes. Tiawenhk. Thank you.

I think there are two that are pretty concerning.

One is the way in which the act doesn't speak directly to the heart of what the purpose is. In the purpose of the act it's to “establish measures to facilitate the provision of”. Never is there a specific point where it says that the federal government “is committed to providing adequate, sustainable and long-term funding for...Indigenous languages”. That appears in the preamble, but it does not appear in the purpose of the act.

The other piece of it is with respect to language rights. It's mentioned that there are specific points at which indigenous language rights are a piece that should be looked at, and it says that the Indigenous Languages Act would support indigenous language rights, but it does not explicitly describe those rights. That is pretty problematic, especially here in Quebec with Bill 96 and with the fact that now we're seeing this encroachment of the French language on indigenous languages.

Indigenous languages are not the threat to French. English, not indigenous languages, is the threat to French. We're in a different situation here in Quebec as well, so those amendments would be particularly helpful for those of us here in Quebec with this encroachment.

[Eric Melillo, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

I appreciate that. Thank you.

Just in the interest of time, I will try to move through to the rest of the witnesses as well.

Minister, you also mentioned the need for improved coordination of funding. I wonder if you could speak to that as well. I'm curious regarding your experience with how the federal government has worked with the government of your territory as well as with the indigenous governments within it. Perhaps you could speak to some of the successes and some of the things that have not gone so well.

[R.J. Simpson]

Thank you very much.

I won't speak too much to the operational side of the collaboration because I don't really get to see that side, but I know there are instances when I look at the news and realize that the federal government has given millions of dollars to indigenous governments for indigenous language revitalization. That's great, and I have no issue with that, but when it comes as a surprise, it's clear that there is a lack of coordination. We have developed good relationships with the indigenous governments in the Northwest Territories. We're all working together to revitalize languages. Bringing the Government of Canada into that fold as well would, I think, go a long way.

I want to make very clear that I don't want to step on the toes of indigenous governments. If they prefer a nation-to-nation relationship, then that's fine. We have been working well together. I know there is more we can do.

We've been running a number of programs. Some have been successful at really sparking a lot of interest and passion for languages in communities. We have a mentor-apprentice program that pairs language learners with those who have a language. Speaking with people in that program, I really see that we're at a turning point now, where this generation is really invested in language. The younger people are making an effort to learn their language, and they are passing it on to their children. I know someone who is just learning the language. They are in their thirties. Their two-year-old is more fluent than they are now. It's almost skipped a generation. We are making progress, but we just need to work together a little more closely.

I will follow up with a written response on the operational side of that as well.

Thank you.

[Eric Melillo, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

I appreciate that.

I don't really have a lot more time, but I have just maybe a quick question for you, Minister, on that coordination aspect.

Is it along the lines of the federal government perhaps not being responsive or understanding some of the specific realities of the communities in the territory? Where do you find there is a lack of coordination from that perspective?

[R.J. Simpson]

I respect the fact that the Government of Canada wants to work directly with indigenous governments. As I said, I wouldn't stand in the way of that. To have the conversation with respect to how we can work more closely would get us moving in the right direction. Once we start having those conversations, we ultimately get to where we need to go and we do work better together.

Thank you.

[Eric Melillo, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Mr. Melillo.

We'll now go to Mr. McLeod for six minutes.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the presenters who are here today.

I think I'm the only MP who attended Indian residential school. The language that was spoken there was the strap. Everybody who spoke anything other than English was strapped.

My parents spoke three languages. They spoke the Métis French, they spoke English, and they spoke the Dene language, their indigenous language. By the time I left school, I could speak only two, even though I didn't speak English until I started school at six years old.

My children can speak only one. Now, if I want to go back and try to learn the languages, I can go to a nice facility and learn English and I can go out to a nice facility and learn French, but there is no place for me to go to learn the indigenous Dene language. That's the same for my children, so I listened with interest to Dr. Lukaniec when she talked about funding parity. I believe it's going to be a real challenge for us to save some of these languages.

I just want to ask you if you could talk a little more about what it's going to take, compared to what's being invested in the French and English languages, to save some of the indigenous languages.

[Dr. Megan Lukaniec]

Tiawenhk for this question.

I think there's a lot more that is involved. I think the metaphor of rebuilding is a useful one to think of here, because we're not going to be able to simply go on the Internet for language teachers, find material to teach for English or French and pull it into the classroom and have supports and environments where students can be immersed in the language outside.

Those things don't exist. Those supports don't exist. Those resources don't exist. We need to build them, and for my community, without speakers—we're trying to build a new generation of speakers—that takes an enormous amount of time.

We need funding for research. We need funding for curriculum development. We need funding for teacher training. We need funding for accreditation. We need funding to build a language authority and to actually pay individuals to be hired to be in full-time adult immersion programs, like the programs that exist at Ohsweken Six Nations or Kahnawake. That's where we would like to head, but with the current funding we have, there's nothing that is going to get us even close to that.

We know that we're not being provided even adequate funding for a minimum of things we need to do, for essential things that we need to do in order to reawaken our language. In terms of the budgets for English and French compared to indigenous languages, when you think about how many indigenous languages there are here in Canada compared to just two colonial languages that have caused this damage, it really is shocking to think of the disparity between the budgets that are allocated by the federal government.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

I am probably going to ask you a dozen more questions here, but I want to ask R. J. Simpson, who has joined us from my neck of the woods, a couple of questions.

I'd like to first of all acknowledge that today is the first day of Indigenous Languages Month in the NWT, so I'd like to say mahsi cho to R.J. for appearing.

I was quite happy last year. We announced $17.7 million from the Government of Canada to support the Canada-Northwest Territories Agreement on Indigenous Languages. As the minister has indicated, we have nine official indigenous languages, but there are more. The Michif language, which we heard about the other day, doesn't get recognized in the Northwest Territories, and there are several others.

A number of these languages are still being spoken in the communities, but if you talk to the elders, they say that a lot of the language is now being watered down. The younger people are speaking a different version. The language is not as strong.

I'd like to ask the minister if he could explain how the GNWT is working with those communities like the Gwich'in communities, because the Gwich'in language is expected to disappear in 10 years if we continue the way we're going. I'd like to ask him how he's working with those communities where the language is actually threatened.

[R.J. Simpson]

Thank you, MP McLeod.

I will say that I'm in a similar boat to MP McLeod. My grandfather spoke four or five different languages. Now it's down to one: I've lost all of my traditional languages as well.

The Government of Northwest Territories provides funding to the different indigenous governments around the Northwest Territories for indigenous language and education coordinators. Those positions all work together across the territory to ensure that we have the capacity to do certain things. A lot of communities have very small language communities within them, and they don't have the capacity to do that work, so that is one way we provide support to them. The Gwich'in provide an example of a government that is doing a lot on their own as well. We're happy to support them in kind whenever we can.

We support organizations in a number of different ways. There is broadcasting support for radio stations. If a community wants to have their indigenous language over the airways, we have support for that. There's professional development support. We do all sorts of different things. I can provide to the committee a list of all our supports and how we fund them in writing as well, just recognizing the time.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Your time is up.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Ms. Gill, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank all the witnesses who are here with us today.

There are indeed many common threads in the various testimonies, such as the issue of linguistic depletion. Mr. Simpson has just spoken about this.

Personally, I know my ancestors spoke Abenaki, Mohawk, French and English. And yet, at home, we don't speak any other languages currently apart from French and English. I understand the issue firsthand.

I liked the expression used by Dr. Lukaniec, who spoke of a dormant language and not a dead one. A dormant language is just waiting to be reawakened. I found that most interesting. We sometimes get the impression that in order to speak a language, you just have to buy a textbook or take a class, but it's much more complicated than that.

I would like to hear more about funding from Dr. Lukaniec. She spoke of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, amongst others, and the fact that it was easier in the past to plan over five years.

A new act came into force in 2019, but everyone agrees that the act doesn't have enough teeth and that it is vague. The act does indeed provide guidance and direction, but does not make anything mandatory. Ms. Bear also spoke about this when she talked about languages that are being lost.

So what should we do exactly? The act was passed almost four years ago and just like you, I like to believe that we can do something.

Dr. Lukaniec, what can we do right now in order to reawaken these dormant languages? As a linguist, you are best placed to explain how difficult it can be.

[Dr. Megan Lukaniec]

[Witness spoke Wendat]

Tiawenhk inenh

[English]

I can tell you that it is truly difficult to reawaken a dormant language and that it requires a lot of funding.

There's another problem. With the current funding model put in place by the Department of Canadian Heritage and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, we are not able to measure results on a monthly or yearly basis. The results from my community and many others must be measured over decades.

It is therefore difficult to set up projects when there's only funding for nine months. You have to organize the project from beginning to end. You have to be satisfied with what you get and set new timelines. Of course, we never get an answer to our request in time to start work on the date that we have set.

What's more, planning is really complicated; we can never do any long-term planning. And yet, that is precisely what we need right now: funding and support. That would allow us to establish long‑term plans. Otherwise, spoken Wendat, even in the Wendake community, will decline and we won't be able to record the knowledge of speakers who are still alive. We are also feeling tremendous pressure. We need that long‑term funding.

There is too much to do and not enough time and the deadline is not realistic.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Thank you, Dr. Lukaniec.

You spoke of the urgency of the situation, because it we don't act, the number of speakers of certain languages will decline. I remember when we heard representatives from the Assembly of First Nations Quebec‑Labrador, who also spoke of this urgency. I believe that was the impetus for this study. If we don't act decisively now, certain languages will disappear. As you said, some nations no longer have people who speak their ancestral language. This is a point I wanted to raise, and I'm not sure if you agree with this.

What will be the consequences in the medium and long term if we don't change the funding model?

Thank you again, Dr. Lukaniec.