Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Portage—Lisgar for generously giving me half her time and the opportunity to speak on this subject. I was a member of the procedure and House affairs committee that dealt with this issue. I have some prepared remarks, but I am going to depart from them for the first part of my comments. It appears to me that a narrative has already been started that the procedure and House affairs committee proposed a system under which indigenous languages would be treated as being equal in debates in this place to French and English. Nothing could be further from the truth.
To point out just how great the restrictions are, which are placed upon indigenous languages by the procedure and House affairs committee, I am going to read from the recommendations in its report. There were only two recommendations. The second recommendation deals with expenses associated with being a user of indigenous language. The first one, and the one being discussed here so far is, “That the use of Indigenous languages be recognized in the House of Commons according to the process set out in this report” on page 25-26.
Page 26 of the report states:
...the Committee recommends that members [who wish to use an Indigenous language] be required to give reasonable notice in writing to the Clerk of the House of Commons of their intention to speak in an Indigenous language during a future sitting of the House or committee meeting. In practice, this notice requirement would be similar to that which exists in the Senate of Canada. In the Senate, reasonable notice is not defined; instead, the intention of the term “reasonable” is to provide for flexibility in finding available and qualified simultaneous interpreters. In the case of the House, prospectively, reasonable notice for Indigenous language use would include the time required to obtain interpretation services and make technical arrangements. In addition, the Committee acknowledges that the technical requirements for the use of Indigenous languages in the Chamber differ from those in House committees [where it would be yet more complicated].
To be clear about this, under the proposals made by the PROC committee, if members want to speak an indigenous language in the House of Commons, they are going to have to give substantial advance notice. Time will be required to contact a translator, have that translator come to the House of Commons and have them provide the translation. If it is for committee, a separate translation booth would need to be set up because there are no adequate facilities for the use of a third language, or the relay language process, in our committee rooms right now. We know this because the PROC committee itself had to go through this process, and it could not be done expeditiously.
All of this is by way of saying that if anybody thinks that the procedure and House affairs committee proposed a utopia in which people would stand up and speak an indigenous language with the same facility and immediate translation happening right now between French and English, they are sadly mistaken. If anybody criticizes my colleague and House leader for suggesting that we need to deal in a practical way with the situations that will arise all the time, where someone wants to stand and speak extemporaneously or on a debate that has arisen on short notice, something where we cannot bring a translator in from wherever that language is spoken in the country, then they need to know that using a system like the one my colleague suggested, which the Speaker suggested first, is the way to deal with this.
The person who is speaking the indigenous language speaks the indigenous language and then provides the translation into French or English. There is no other way we can think of to do it, and we racked our imaginations trying to think of other ways of doing it. There is no other practical way of allowing spontaneous participation to occur in this place. When a set piece is coming up, it is great, we can move to what the procedure and House affairs committee suggested. However, what my colleague suggested, what the Speaker suggested, about facilitating this is a reasonable solution.
It is also reasonable for the Speaker to do as he did today, which is to show some flexibility on the time when someone is using an indigenous language, so they can express themselves in both those languages, whether they use the indigenous language first, or as today, they speak in English or French and then go to the indigenous language. That is all my colleague was suggesting. That is a reasonable approach. There is no reason to attack my colleague, who has the best of intentions, who cares so deeply and who has, my goodness, a family that includes people who are speakers of an indigenous language.
To say this is some kind of colonial-mindedness is just wrong. The fact is, there is tolerance and openness throughout Canadian society, regardless of partisan divide, and turning this issue into a partisan issue when we had a report that all members of the House with good intentions participated in with good intentions, is just inappropriate.
We are discussing the 66th report of the procedure and House affairs committee. I want to discuss some significant practical facts. As members are no doubt aware, I wrote a book on Canada's official languages some 25 years ago. It came out in December of 1993. Here we are at the 25th anniversary since that was done. I did have a bit of an interest at the time, and I was therefore eager to add to my knowledge of Canada's indigenous languages when we had these hearings.
One of the things that is clear is that while we can talk about indigenous languages as a single group or concept, the reality is there are some indigenous languages that are spoken by a significant number of people, enough that they are not considered by linguistics experts to be in danger of extinction in the short run. Six of our 60 indigenous languages fit into this category. They are Cree, Dene, Innu, Inuktitut, Ojibway and Oji-Cree. Of those, Inuktitut is the standout. Its numbers are actually growing, partly because of the large birth rate up in Nunavut, and in part because of the environment. Being far away from English and French language centres has to some degree provided a natural layer of protection that was not afforded to other languages.
The remaining languages, although equally precious, to be clear, are in much greater danger, and there are practical difficulties associated with finding translators for some of those. On the other hand, the likelihood of having a speaker of one of the less-widely spoken languages in the Commons is considerably less than, for example, the virtually 100% chance that we will always have an Inuktitut speaker in the House of Commons.
I will go to the point about how seriously my party takes language rights in Canada, because we have been attacked today. I am going to make this point by turning to official language use and its history in Canada. The use of official languages in our parliamentary institutions has been an issue since 1791, when the Constitutional Act 1791 was passed. In January of 1793, there was debate in the legislative assembly of Lower Canada in which French was adopted as one of the official languages of that institution. With the British North America Act, or Constitution Act 1867, as it is now called, George-Étienne Cartier and Sir John A. Macdonald ensured that both French and English would be languages of this institution.
The translation bureau of the federal government was set in place under the government of R.B. Bennett, a Conservative prime minister. The Translation Bureau Act was enacted in 1934 and remains in effect to this day. In 1958, John George Diefenbaker brought in simultaneous translation to this place. Before that, when a member spoke in French, unilingual English members had no idea what that person was saying, and the reverse. That was opposed by many members, including many Liberal members. However, it was the right thing to do. Similarly, the most recent version of the Official Languages Act was passed by the government of Brian Mulroney.
On the issue of indigenous participation, I just want to point out that everyone knows that indigenous Canadians were deprived of the right to vote. They were given that right in 1960 by Diefenbaker's government. There had been an earlier attempt in 1885, under Sir John A. Macdonald's government, to introduce what they called the electoral franchise act, which gave indigenous Canadians the right to vote. That was opposed by parliamentary Liberals at the time. In 1898, that right was taken away.
There are no parties here who can say we have all been angels throughout our history on this subject. However, on this subject right now of trying to do what we all can to assist indigenous Canadians in being full participants in every aspect of Canadian life, including debates here, all parties stand on morally equal ground. We merely disagree on the practicalities of how best to achieve that common goal.