Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak today to the 66th report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs on the use of indigenous languages in House proceedings. I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston.
It has been very good to hear my colleagues from both sides of the House speak to this already. It is very interesting. Personally, I am very inspired and encouraged by what I hear. My speech may be a little different, but it is wonderful that we can each bring our own perspective. My grand daughter's father is of Mennonite descent and her mother is Anishinaabe. I am so pleased to be able to share that heritage and so many wonderful things with my grand daughter.
I am also fortunate to have lived in Grand Rapids, Manitoba for a number of years. I learned at that time some wonderful church hymns in the Cree language. I will not be sharing those today, but it was a wonderful language and wonderful to be able to learn and share that language.
The report we are discussing today calls on us to decide on an appropriate balance between the use of indigenous languages in House proceedings and the ability of all members to comprehend those interventions. In principle, simultaneous interpretation of all indigenous languages sounds like it is a well-intentioned aspirational concept, but it is important that we be fully alert not only to many of the good consequences and good effects of this, but also maybe to some of the unintended consequences that could come of it.
I worry that unintended consequences will follow if we adopt the committee's report specifically as written. For starters, let me explain why. There are a dozen languages other than French and English spoken in Canada by more Canadians than all speakers of indigenous languages combined, namely, Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Punjabi, Arabic, Tagalog, Italian, German, Hindi, Urdu, Portuguese and Russian. If we were to treat each indigenous language separately, and there are more than 60 of them, I could add yet another dozen languages that are more commonly spoken in Canada than Cree, the most common indigenous language.
As a result, as members we may find ourselves with new demands by constituents from among these 24 linguistic communities, or others, to speak for them in their language in the House. Today, I can say that Canada's official languages are spoken and readily understood in Parliament, with a small indulgence for modest pieces of other languages that members speak in this place from time to time. However, if interpretation facilities are in place for non-official languages, over time parliamentarians may be harder pressed to explain why interpretation is not also provided for other languages spoken in the House of Commons that may represent a large number of Canadians.
Another concern resulting from the law of unintended consequences with regard to the recommendations to arrange for interpreters is that Canada simply does not have a lot of people right now at the ready to become interpreters and to interpret speeches for us. According to the 2016 census, there are some 400 Canadians with a knowledge of indigenous languages who work in the interpretation and translation field. Considering that translators and interpreters do very different work, the Translation Bureau has an inventory of just 115 indigenous language interpreters on file. I understand that only three of them live in or are close to Ottawa. The rest live and work in communities across Canada, and often at quite a distance from Ottawa.
Consider the interpreters' time that would definitely be required. Though we might only be asking someone to come here to interpret a 10-minute speech, that might require them to dedicate two or more days to a single assignment, considering the travel required. That is time away from their providing important and necessary support in their home communities, support that is crucial to many Canadians' interactions with medical, government and legal services. I am thinking back to my time living in Grand Rapids, a very isolated community where these services could very much be used.
To satisfy this report and, truthfully, a few of us politicians here in Ottawa, who I am not saying should be disregarded, I do think that the needs of other Canadians and indigenous Canadians across the country should be put before our needs. That said, in order to satisfy our request, we would be asking what few interpreters there are to abandon their clients for days at a time. We run a serious risk of throwing into disarray those important services, potentially endangering many Canadians. That is a significant and legitimate concern, and it is one that I hope we have not overlooked.
Another concern is that despite the available pool of interpreters, most of them are simply not experienced at interpreting to and from French, which is another part of this. That would prompt the need for some of us to turn to what is called “relay interpretation”. Let me explain.
If we have someone speaking Cree that would need to be interpreted into English, then that English interpretation would need to be rendered into French. If we think of the expression “lost in translation”, which is a real phenomenon, that is likely what we could see happen with the use of relay interpretation.
Compounding this is subsection 4(3) of the Official Languages Act, which requires our debates to be recorded in one of the official languages and to be accompanied by a translation in the other official language. In fact, this could be unconstitutional.
Subsection 16(1) of the charter provides the following:
English and French are the official languages of Canada and have equality of status and equal rights and privileges as to their use in all institutions of the Parliament and government of Canada.
Relay interpretation might not honour these constitutional guarantees of equality of status and equal rights.
Those issues were a matter of concern earlier this year in the other place, when a report of the Senate's internal economy committee presented the views of its advisory working group on parliamentary translation services. I am going to quote from that report:
...the lack of high quality translation and interpretation services for the Senate also affects the rights of Canadians...the Senate has a constitutional duty to make services of equal quality available to the public in both official languages. Words matter; the Senate must do what it can to ensure that no matter what language is originally used, its publications and broadcasts reflect the very best translation and interpretation available so that all Canadians have equal access to the entire context of the debate and to its nuances.
If the equality of Canada's official languages is genuinely important to us, these unintended consequences, and more, should offer all of us pause. Of course, we are not talking here about the right to use an indigenous language in the House.
We are firm believers in the freedom of speech. The right of members to speak out in this chamber on behalf of their constituents is paramount. Speech goes to the very purpose of this institution. Its in the name, “Parliament”.
A very workable plan has been laid out, and I am going to quote the Speaker. He said:
....if members want to ensure that the comments they make in a language other than French or English can be understood by those who are following the proceedings and are part of the official record in the Debates, an extra step is required. Specifically, members need to repeat their comments in one of the two official languages so that our interpreters can provide the appropriate interpretation and so that they may be fully captured in the Debates.
I think this is a sensible and balanced approach that would minimize the unintended consequences while honouring the equality of the official languages.
This approach is done in the Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory, an Australian jurisdiction where close to 20% of the population uses at least one of the territory's 100-plus aboriginal languages daily. Closer to home, in Yukon, the territorial legislature allows the use of English and French and what are called “Yukon aboriginal languages”, but there are no interpretation facilities.
I guess I would just wrap up by saying that we do believe that resources like these would be better used to help promote and support the indigenous peoples' languages. I understand the spirit of this report. I think we all support the spirit of this report, but I think there are more efficient ways we can accomplish the desired goals than by what has been laid out in the report.