Justice Committee on May 3rd, 2007

[Johane Tremblay]

This provision should only be used in exceptional circumstances. If the point is to allow an accused person to be tried in a judicial district or division of their language, the judicial appointment process should ensure that each district is appropriately bilingual and that the provision governing a change of venue is only applied in exceptional circumstances.

[Carole Freeman, Bloc, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

We could also ensure that all legal personnel is functionally bilingual, as you stated at the beginning.

[Johane Tremblay]

We're not talking about all personnel. We're talking about institutional capacity. Out of a group of 10 Crown prosecutors working in one district, for instance, you would need to assess the correct proportion to ensure that the accused receives—

[Carole Freeman, Bloc, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

When I said all personnel, I meant that at every level, at every stage, there are—

[Johane Tremblay]

At every level, yes. The clerk—

[Carole Freeman, Bloc, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

We should specify that at every level, there should be enough functionally bilingual staff to provide the service. It is therefore a recommendation which is absolutely...

Fine, thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Thank you, Ms. Freeman.

We'll go to Mr. Thompson.

[Myron Thompson, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Thank you.

I find this discussion to be very interesting. I live in the riding of Wild Rose. I attend a lot of the court sessions in that area in Alberta, mainly because of the work I've done over the years in the justice area.

I'm listening to this discussion, and I'm agreeing with this bill, and I think it's the right thing to do. But I wonder if you would care to comment on an area like mine, where a large majority of the cases require languages other than French or English. We have a huge European settlement--Dutch and German people, many of whom may be involved in this, not to the mention the Asian immigrants.

It seems to me that there's been a tremendous amount of pressure on the courts in my area from time to time to provide a trial of some sort in some language other than French or English. Do you care to comment on that?

[Graham Fraser]

My understanding is that the courts have gone to considerable efforts, along with other institutions in Canadian society, to ensure that translation services are provided for languages other than the official languages.

Basically, my mandate only covers our official languages. The official languages policy has by no means prevented the courts from providing translation services for people who are accused or testify, in the same way as hospitals often have emergency translation services to ensure that someone who comes to the hospital screaming in pain who doesn't speak either French or English can be understood.

I think one of the things that should be understood generally about the non-official languages spoken in Canada is that, by and large, they're transition languages.They're languages that are spoken in the home for a generation.

There was a rule of thumb developed by a political scientist, Michael MacMillan, which I've found very useful, which he calls the third-generation rule of thumb. If a community sustains a language as the language of the home for three generations, they can make a legitimate claim for language rights.

It may have been because of this that one of the commissioners at the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism submitted a dissenting report arguing that Ukrainian should be an official language in Canada. In 1951 there were 450,000 Canadians who spoke Ukrainian at home, but by 1981, that number was down to 45,000.

In contrast, in 1961 there were five million French-speaking Canadians, three million of whom were unilingual, and in 2001 there were seven million French-speaking Canadians, four million of whom were unilingual. This is not a transitional language in Canada; this is an official language. It's a growing language, and increasingly across the country it's becoming a language of welcome to immigrants and refugees. It's an official language to which various language rights have been enshrined in the Charter.

[Louise Aucoin]

I quite agree with Mr. Fraser. We are a very multicultural country. We have many languages across the country, but there are really only two official languages.

While there may be some people who are in the court system who need translation, I can't imagine that we'll be offering institutionalized languages other than French and English. We're having a hard enough time making sure that French-speaking people have access to the court system. It's quite obvious that the need may be there, but it would be quite a complicated process.

[Myron Thompson, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

I think that's the reason I mention it. I want to make absolutely certain that everybody understands that the needs are there and that there are many areas throughout the country where this problem exists. It's out of the realm of whether you speak English or French, because they speak neither.

If I've time left, I'd like to share it with Mr. Dykstra or other colleagues.

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

You don't have any time left. I'll come to Mr. Dykstra right after this.

Mr. Bagnell, the sole Liberal representative, please, the floor is yours.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

I have consulted with my colleagues and they don't have any questions, so they've asked me to do another round.

Just following up on Myron's question, I found in my travels that a lot of French people actually also speak English, but the one group in Canada that doesn't is Inuit, the older Inuit people. Of course, they were here long before the French or the English. I assume in Nunavut they don't have a problem because it's an official language there, but once they get to the federal level, has that been a problem?

[Graham Fraser]

Inuktitut is an official language in Nunavut. There are, I think, seven official languages in the Northwest Territories, but only English and French in Yukon; although there are eight aboriginal language groups, they are quite small.

There are 23,000 to 25,000 Inuktitut speakers, and I think that virtually all of them are in Nunavut. I'm not aware of a concentration of Inuktitut speakers, possibly in Nunavik in northern--

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

They aren't in the courts, though.

[Graham Fraser]

But I'm not aware of a problem that the higher levels of the courts have had in dealing with this. Certainly aboriginal languages is an issue that interests my office. We support the idea, and we've sent letters of support to the Nunavut government, supporting the changes they are now making to their language legislation to ensure the protection of the three official languages in Nunavut, but it's not directly within my mandate. I'm not aware of the problem affecting the upper levels of the courts.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

I had basically hoped to propose the four amendments I talked to in the first round. I haven't heard any objections to those from any other members yet, but I just want to continue making sure that they're practical, to fine-tune them a bit.

On the translation, I think we've understood that it's not a big deal, that there are not a lot of documents and it shouldn't be very onerous to add that right. The mandatory trials is the one being talked about. We're not talking about a lot of trials where there are co-accused in different languages where the judge might decide to have unilingual trials as opposed to bilingual trials. We're not talking about a huge number of cases, are we?

[Graham Fraser]

We don't have information. I have no reports to suggest that it's numerous.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

And it would only be under the jurisdiction--

[Graham Fraser]

Again, what we're suggesting is that the discretion of the judge be maintained.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

So there are probably very few occurrences, so that's not an onerous change, to change from “may” to “must”.

The last one, I guess--

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

From “must” to “may”.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

From “must” to “may”.

The last one, although it looks a bit bigger, is to put all the other procedures...which seems to make obvious sense. But not being a lawyer, I wonder what proportion of what happens this would change. How many of these procedures are not covered? What proportion of work in courts and in the system is not covered in French now?

[Graham Fraser]

Before I defer to my legal adviser on this, my understanding is that this right exists now; it's just a question of the way things happen now. The accused has to make the request at every stage of the process, which results in a delay of the kicking in of this approach, as I understand.

The proposal I'm putting forward is that once you tick the box saying you want to have the trial in English or in French, immediately the process goes to work, without your having to then, even though you've asked for this trial to be in English in Quebec or in French outside Quebec, ask again for this other stuff, and then ask again for this other stuff. There would be an automatic understanding that, if the trial is going to be in French or in English, the process would start immediately.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Madame Tremblay.