Published by Senator David Smith on 01 April 2008
In February, I led a delegation of three Senators on a visit to Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut, which is located on Baffin Island, in the far cold north. In 1999, the former Northwest Territories was divided into two separate territories. When Nunavut was created, the balance of the original Northwest Territories (N.W.T). retained its original N.W.T. name with its capital remaining in Yellowknife.
The town of Iqaluit, formerly known as Frobisher Bay, became the new capital of Nunavut, which includes all of the eastern Arctic area, but also includes those portions west and north of Hudson’s Bay where the primary native language is Inuktitut, the language of the Inuit people.
There are two Senators whose mother language is Inuktitut, i.e. Senator Willie Adams and Senator Charlie Watts, and the Rules Committee is currently mandated to review and make recommendations on implementing a system whereby both of these senators can address both the Senate, and two particular Committees (Aboriginal Peoples and Fishing & Oceans) in their native tongue with translation made available to their fellow Senators in both English and French.
The Legislature in Nunavut has 19 members, with simultaneous interpretation between Inuktitut and English. We also took with us francophone interpreters and on Budget Day, when their Finance Minister spoke, all comments were available in all three languages. The Inuktitut language (which some people still identify by the old term “Eskimo”) is alive and well in Nunavut. It is spoken by about 85% of the population, and during both Members Statements and Question Period during our time in the Legislature, almost 90% of the dialogue was in Inuktitut. Children learn the language in school, and they listen to some broadcasts in Inuktitut from Canadian sources as well as from stations in Greenland.
I led the delegation in my capacity as Vice Chair of the Rules Committee and Senators Fernand Robichaud (New Brunswick) and Bert Brown (Alberta) were also on the trip. Senator Willie Adams, who represents Nunavut, acted as our host. Although the weather was very cold (it reached –40 degrees, which is the same in both Celsius and Fahrenheit), the hospitality was very warm.
As a result of the contacts and information gleaned from both this trip and ongoing research, we are confident that we will be able to introduce a trial period during which time the necessary translation services will be available in the Senate of Canada by a practical and cost efficient infrastructure that pays respect to this ancient Canadian language.