Business worried about new Nunavut language law

The executive director of the Baffin Regional Chamber of Commerce said this week that the Inuit Language Protection Act will present “challenges” to many businesses, and in some cases additional expenses that will be passed on to customers.

At the Nunavut Languages Summit, Hal Timar laid out a range of concerns about the act that he said he heard from BRCC members.

The biggest issue, Timar, was concern over the consistency and transparency of the act’s enforcement.

Unless rigorous procedures are established and made public so businesses can understand them, different government personnel could apply the law differently, he said.

Timar also said the smallest businesses have the biggest concerns about meeting the act’s requirements.

“The businesses that can least afford it are the ones that are going to have the hardest time,” he argued.

The Inuit Language Protection Act contains a section where the Language Commissioner can exempt a business if compliance with the act would result in “undue hardship”.

“Undue hardship” means a negative impact on health and safety, significant impairment of function, or “size, efficiency or viability of a private sector body”.

Nunavut businesses already have a hard time finding trained interpreter-translators in the territory, Timar said.

Mark Walker, a Northwestel vice-president, said his company tries to at least provide the basics.

“We are unable to translate all documents, but we do try to provide the basics,” said Northwestel vice-president Mark Walker.

Northwestel telephone operators are bilingual, phone bills are mostly translated into Inuktitut and many local employees are bilingual.

Walker said other services, such as the company website, are not available in the Inuit language.

In contrast, some smaller businesses end up using ad hoc arrangements, such as asking regular employees who happen to be bilingual to act as interpreters, even when not trained as such.

On the upside, Timar said, are opportunities in the training sector for teaching the Inuit language, as well as translation and interpretation opportunities.

At the Nunavut languages summit, held this past week in Iqaluit, Timar said he was dismayed to learn, at last week’s meeting, that all hospitality businesses are classed under the act as “essential services” and therefore have no choice but to provide service in the Inuit language.

The act lists the hospitality industry, along with providers electricity, water and sewage as “essential.”

The hospitality industry pays some of the lowest wages and has a lot of turn-over among maids, servers, and other low-level positions, Timar said.

“The moment they become competent… somebody’s stealing them, usually the government,” he said.

That means hospitality businesses will constantly face the high cost of training new staff.

“The cost of a room or a pizza goes back in your (the customer’s) pocket,” he said.

Baker Lake businessman David Simailak slammed Timar’s comments, saying if they represented the official position of the Baffin Regional Chamber of Commerce, he was glad he was not a member.

Simailak argued that it’s good for businesses to have high turnover as competent staff members left for higher-paying government jobs, because it generates a more skilled workforce.

“You’re taking their money,” he said to Timar. “Let’s take their money and give them something in return.

Another concern Timar had was the issue of legal liability, using his own family as an example.

Groceries and pharmaceutical products aren’t labeled in Inuktitut, so if a customer can’t read English or French they’ll need someone to translate for them.

If the customer has an allergy, as Timar’s family does, they might suffer a life-threatening reaction if they take the wrong medicine or food.

Timar pointed out that big southern manufacturers of these products aren’t going to produce Inuit-language translations for a market as small as Nunavut’s, so he anticipated that the job of making translated labels would fall onto retail stores.

But with an untrained translator the stores are vulnerable to liability if a translated label is wrong.

“That’s not a responsibility you want to give to just one person,” Timar said.

Sandra Inutiq, director of policy at the language commissioner’s office, said Timar is “making issues out of non-issues.”

For example, training funds are available through Kakivak Association, she said.

Many of Timar’s concerns were about aspects of the act that the Office of the Nunavut Languages Commissioner is currently looking at how to implement.

The languages commissioner, Alexina Kublu, said the office will hire a “private sector liaison officer” to deal with these issues and develop procedures for them.

That position will be for a three-year term.

The “private sector” covers businesses, unions, societies and other non-governmental organizations, the act says.

Entities that face difficutlies complying with the act will get help from the liaison officer and the commissioner’s office to develop a language plan.

That’s a plan for the business to develop Inuit-language services in steps, but with measurable goals and deadlines for implementation.