Mr. Speaker, the hon. member made more of a comment than a question. I will take the advantage of developing the theme he expressed as follows.
There are widely spoken indigenous languages in Canada: Cree, Oji-Cree, Inuktitut and several others, the “big six” that have over 10,000 speakers each. There are also many languages of fewer speakers. I do not think there should be, in principle, a distinction between them. One is not more valuable than the other. It is simply a statistical likelihood that we will have certain individuals here.
There are also practical difficulties that get greater and greater with respect to getting a suitable translator for some of the less widely spoken languages. On the other hand, no one just shows up in the middle of a Parliament unless he or she becomes a member through a by-election, which means we have some warning as to who the speakers are.
The second point I want to make in this regard is on the language of use, not whether the speaker is indigenous. It seems reasonable to me that if we were to have, for example, non-indigenous people representing an area with an indigenous population and if they were trying to give a set speech, we ought to try to accommodate it. If they were doing so in a manner that was off the cuff, they would be expected to try to provide some kind of translation. This seems reasonable to me. It is all about equality.