Make Nunavut language bills tougher, groups tell committee
Nunavummiut who appeared before a legislative committee Thursday on Nunavut's proposed language laws said they have to do more to protect the Inuit languages.
The Ajauqtiit standing committee began hearings Thursday into Bill 6, which would create a new official languages act, and Bill 7, known as the Inuit language protection act. Both passed first and second reading in Nunavut's legislative assembly earlier this year.
Bill 6 would give Nunavut its own version of the existing Official Languages Act, which existed when Nunavut was still part of the Northwest Territories.
Those who attended Thursday's committee hearing had more comments on Bill 7, which aims to preserve and strengthen Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun in the territory.
"I'm losing how to speak Inuktitut," Inukshuk High School student Solomonie Ryan told the committee. "It's hard to keep this language when you don't use it in high school."
If it passes, Bill 7 would require services to be provided in the Inuit languages, as well as ensure those languages be included on signs, bills and advertising.
It would also aim to implement Inuktitut language instruction from kindergarten to Grade 12 by 2019.
But Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. president Paul Kaludjak, speaking in Inuktitut, told the committee it should act faster to implement that instruction.
The Qikiqtani Inuit Association agreed with NTI's concern, but it had its own issuesabout the draft laws.
President Thomasie Alikatuktut said the government should retain its existing language commissioner's office, rather than create a new language ministry as proposed in the draft legislation.
"If you want, or are serious about government accountability, then you got to set up or enhance the role of the language commissioner and steer clear from creating new ministries that, for all intents and purposes, take away rather than enhance the rights of Inuit," Alikatuktut said.
The hearings on the language bills continue Friday. The committee will hear from language commissioner Johnny Kusugak and a number of organizations, including the Francophone Association of Nunavut.