Hon. Dennis Glen Patterson: Honourable senators, I rise today in reply to the Speech from the Throne.

When the Right Honourable Mary Simon stood in this chamber and delivered her speech, she spoke in Inuktitut. She opened her address urging action on reconciliation. She pushed us to move beyond platitudes and sound bites to actually achieve change. To quote Her Excellency:

Despite the profound pain, there is hope.

There is hope in the every day. Reconciliation is not a single act, nor does it have an end date. It is a lifelong journey of healing, respect and understanding. We need to embrace the diversity of Canada and demonstrate respect and understanding for all peoples every day.

Already, I have seen how Canadians are committed to reconciliation. Indigenous Peoples are reclaiming our history, stories, culture and language through action. Non-Indigenous Peoples are coming to understand and accept the true impact of the past and the pain suffered by generations of Indigenous Peoples. Together they are walking the path towards reconciliation.

Colleagues, I believe that language is a vital aspect of culture and identity, so it is incumbent upon us to do our utmost to protect, promote and revitalize Indigenous languages.

When I was minister of education for the Northwest Territories, the Government of Canada, represented by the then Indian affairs and Northern development minister, the late Honourable John Munro, made a special trip to Yellowknife in 1982 to meet with our cabinet to inform us that Canada would take action to legislate official bilingualism in the Northwest Territories.

I remember telling Minister Munro in response that while the benefits of official bilingualism would be welcome in my constituency, where there is a significant francophone population, if the Government of Canada would not correspondingly support and recognize Indigenous languages also in need of recognition and support in the N.W.T., federal unilateral action would amount to a declaration of war. “We have more tanks than you do!” the minister told me, jokingly, but agreed to consider my plea for parallel federal support for Indigenous languages and helped authorize a meeting with the secretary of state to discuss ongoing federal support for Indigenous languages.

At that time, I served in our cabinet with the Honourable Richard Nerysoo, who was then Premier of the Northwest Territories. We came to Ottawa and negotiated with the then secretary of state, who was also our esteemed former colleague senator Serge Joyal, and came away with a contribution agreement for a significant $16 million to support Indigenous languages. This was the so-called Territorial Language Accord, which has since then continuously provided federal support for French language enhancement for our small percentage of French speakers in Nunavut — roughly 4% — and roughly equal support for the enhancement of Inuktut languages in Nunavut, the first languages of a significant majority of our 85% Inuit population.

For our part of the deal, the N.W.T. government passed the Official Languages Act, which recognized nine Indigenous languages in addition to French and English as the official Aboriginal languages of the territory. This carried over when the territory later divided, and Nunavut was created. Canada’s newest territory passed its own Official Languages Act in 2008, which recognized Inuktut, Inuinnaqtun, English and French as the official languages of Nunavut.

A key element of the Act is the inclusion of language in section 3, which states:

. . . the Official Languages of Nunavut have equality of status and equal rights and privileges as to their use in territorial institutions.

That same year, the Government of Nunavut passed the parallel Inuit Language Protection Act. The then minister of languages, the Honourable James Arreak, released a document entitled Uqausivut, which was meant to serve as a road map for language protection and revitalization for the territory. It explained how the Official Languages Act and the Inuit Language Protection Act would work in tandem to provide the legislative framework required to see Inuit languages flourish.

The document clearly laid out the intent of these bills by stating:

While respecting the equality of Official Languages, the Inuit Language Protection Act was designed specifically to ensure respect for unilingual Inuit, particularly Elders, to reverse language shift among youth, and to strengthen the use of Inuktut among all Nunavummiut. The Act was unanimously approved by the Members of the Legislative Assembly of Nunavut in September 2008, and is now law in Nunavut.

As one of Canada’s founding languages, Inuktut is also an irreplaceable part of the national heritage, and contributes to the richness and diversity of life in this country. Canada recognized this fact, and the need to protect and support Inuktut, when it signed the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions in 2005, and, more recently, when it endorsed the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in November 2010.

The act requires, and I stress this, every organization — which includes by definition “a public sector body, municipality or private sector body,” and a “public sector body” means “a federal department, agency or institution” — to “provide, in the Inuit Language, . . . customer or client services that are available to the general public.”

The act goes on to say that every organization shall be bound by the language and signage obligations laid out in the act.

Sadly, honourable colleagues, this is not the reality we live in today in Nunavut. Inuit are not able to access federal government services in their preferred first language. During the Aboriginal Peoples Committee’s study of Bill C-91, the Indigenous Languages Act, former Nunavut languages commissioner Helen Klengenberg shared a legal opinion with the committee studying the Bill — an opinion which stated clearly that Canada was equally obligated to adhere to the Inuit Language Protection Act as an organization operating within the territory. Accordingly, the committee, with the support of this chamber, reinforced this by attempting to ensure that essential federal services could be provided in an Indigenous language with a reasonable qualification where numbers warrant. However, that amendment was removed in the House under the former majority Liberal government.

It is of great concern to me that the Government of Canada will not honour Nunavut’s Inuit Language Protection Act enacted by the duly elected Legislative Assembly of Nunavut. I often have to deal with complaints from unilingual Inuit who have problems accessing federal government services and programs.

There is no accommodation for the Inuit elders who face language barriers in accessing government programs now delivered through the Income Tax Act. This is partly why I believe that studies have shown that 30% of Nunavut residents — the highest proportion in the country — do not file tax returns. We all know those returns are difficult enough to access and understand for folks who speak English or French.

A very disturbing example of how the Inuit face prejudice — due to Canada’s failure to honour its clear obligations under the Nunavut Inuit Language Protection Act — came to my attention in the last federal election campaign in 2019. At a polling station in Iqaluit, the entire signage at the polling station was in English and in French only — with no signage whatsoever in the Inuktut language. An elder who was at the poll to vote complained to the staff about this blatant failure to respect the third official language — Inuktut — at the poll. She was given a pencil and asked to voluntarily translate the election signage, and handwrite the information on the sign into Inuktut.

When the Indigenous Languages Act was presented and studied in the Senate, Inuit participants in the committee study complained that while it was commendable that the bill addressed the weakened state of many Indigenous languages in Canada which are in danger of extinction due to small numbers of speakers and disuse, it is also essential that the federal Indigenous Languages Act address the needs of Indigenous languages which currently have a better footing and are being more widely used in daily life — recognizing that those languages, like Inuktut, should also be recognized and supported in the new legislation. Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami’s efforts to have these unique needs of the Inuit, whose language is healthy compared, sadly, to many First Nations languages in Canada — which is recognized in the appendix that Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami proposed to be added to the bill — were not supported and not included in the bill. As Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated President Aluki Kotierk explained:

Nunavut Inuit, in close collaboration with others across Inuit Nunangat, have made every effort to work constructively with the Government of Canada to develop Bill C-91. Although we have attempted to engage in the process in good faith, this bill was, by no means, co-developed with Inuit.

Ms. Kotierk added:

This legislation, which is intended to help reverse the steady slide of Indigenous languages into disappearance, does not address issues of access to public services in Indigenous languages and does not reflect the needs which have been clearly communicated by Inuit.

While having the pleasure of hosting our colleague Senator Cormier in Iqaluit last week, I learned that the previously established funding amounts disbursed annually between Canada and the Northwest Territories — and now Canada and Nunavut — have persisted for all these years until recently. The last bilateral agreement for Nunavut was from 2016 to 2020 — a four-year agreement instead of the previous pattern of a five-year agreement. More recently, the renewed agreement has been reduced to two years.

There is a strong concern in the Government of Nunavut that the federal government will now be pushing, as they have done in the Yukon and the Northwest Territories, to have Nunavut’s funding for official languages be sourced from the meagre national fund established under the Indigenous Languages Act — which is primarily geared to supporting struggling and threatened Indigenous languages. This would be contrary to the long-standing bilateral agreement between Canada and the Northwest Territories — and through the Northwest Territories, and now Nunavut — to respect French and English as official languages in our territories, but also it would seriously erode support for the Indigenous language of the majority of our population in Nunavut.

Colleagues, we have begun debating Bill C-13 this week. It’s a good day to talk about languages and the long-awaited amendments to the Official Languages Act which, of course, is primarily about Canada’s two official languages. But it was noted by Senator Gold, and others, that the bill also contains a non‑derogation clause to affirm that the bill will not derogate from the rights of Indigenous language speakers. That’s good, but we must be on guard to protect and enhance our Indigenous languages as well.

I’m pleased to have this opportunity, through my reply to the Throne Speech, to put on the public record — as one who personally knows the history of official languages and Indigenous languages in the Northwest Territories, and now Nunavut — my profound concern that Canada must honour the solemn agreement which was made over 40 years ago, where territorial governments accepted official bilingualism for the minority of its French-speaking citizens in return for Canada’s commitments to also provide corresponding support for the recognition and enhancement of Indigenous languages, including, in my territory, Inuktut.

Honourable senators, it’s not enough to say that we support Indigenous languages in theory. We need to ensure that the government follows through with the actions required in order to ensure that we continue to properly resource the measures necessary to provide that support. I, for one, will continue to push the Government of Canada to honour and respect the obligations that everyone doing business in Nunavut, including the federal government, has under the Inuit Language Protection Act.

I’m delighted that Senator Cormier was there with me in my constituency last week to learn about the importance of both Inuktut and Canada’s two official languages in Nunavut. I will count on him for support in this cause.

Thank you, honourable colleagues. Qujannamiik. Taima.

(On motion of Senator LaBoucane-Benson, debate adjourned.)

The Senate proceeded to consideration of the tenth report of the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry (Bill S-236, An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act and the Employment Insurance Regulations (Prince Edward Island), with a recommendation), presented in the Senate on May 17, 2023.