For the first time in its history, the Ontario legislature will allow, interpret and transcribe a language other than English and French.
Ontario NDP MPP Sol Mamakwa poses for a photo at Queen's Park in Toronto on Friday, May 16, 2024.Decades after being punished in a residential school for speaking his own language, Sol Mamakwa will hold the powerful to account at Ontario’s legislature in the very same language past governments tried to bury.
“Language is nationhood, language is identity, language is where history comes from and language is me and my people,” Sol Mamakwa, a 53-year-old NDP legislator, said in an interview.“It’s important because there’s so many of us who are losing our languages. I think it’s a step toward reconciliation and a step toward reviving our languages.”
Mamakwa said his comments were deliberate, trying to plant an idea for change inside the mind of Calandra, who also spoke at the event.The next morning, Mamakwa sipped coffee at the cafeteria in the basement of Queen’s Park with his northern New Democrat friends, Guy Bourgoin, a Métis man representing Mushkegowuk-James Bay, and John Vanthof, a farmer representing Timiskaming-Cochrane.
The only official languages at Queen’s Park are English and French, he told Calandra. It had been that way since Confederation in 1867, with the rules laid out in a standing order. The legislature’s broadcast and recording service department currently provides a live simultaneous interpretation of English to French or vice versa in the chamber, in committee hearings and on television and online.
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