Glen Korstrom
Northern News Services

NNSL (Sep 29/99) - As the Franco-Tenoise prepares to take the GNWT to court for not following its own Official Languages Act, Languages Commissioner Judy Tutcho is steadfast that the government is following the letter of the law.

Tutcho said she has not seen the survey that Yellowknife's French association commissioned though she has heard the results: that 98 per cent of all GNWT employees answered their phones in English only and that three quarters of the documents requested were unavailable in French.

"We can't realistically publish every single document in French, number 1, for the resources (it would cost)" Tutcho said.

"We do have an obligation to publish all acts, records and journals in French. And we do."

Tutcho said on top of the documents which must be printed in French, she has encouraged boards and agencies to make an "issue of offer."

That means that if there are frequent requests for a document in a language other than English that part of it might be translated.

"This is another way of being very cost effective and efficient in regards to deficits," she said.

"It's not cutting things off and saying, 'no, I can't provide it.'"

Tutcho said through acts of offer, parts of a document such as an executive summary could be offered to a unilingual non-anglophone.

Earlier this month, Franco-Tenoise president Andre Legare said a sad irony for the availability of French documents was that even the language commissioner's report was in English only.

Tutcho defends that unilingualism by saying that "I'm into my fourth (one-year) term as language commissioner and there has been not one request for the document in a language other than English."

Further, she said her report was not a legal document and therefore is not legally required to be translated.

As for no one answering the phone in French, Tutcho said there is no obligation to do that.

She then said in other ways there is more non-English seen in Yellowknife.

On construction signs, for example, all wording must be in English, French and Dogrib, according to the official languages guidelines manual.

"If it weren't, a complaint would be made for sure," Tutcho said.

"Take the time to look around and you'll notice it."

All communities in the North are designated for at least one aboriginal language as well as English, French and sometimes both.