Bill aims to guarantee inclusion of Indigenous names on B.C. government documents

A B.C. Opposition MLA has introduced a private member's bill that, if passed, would ensure Indigenous names with the appropriate symbols and accents would be included on government documents such as birth certificates and drivers' licences.

Liberal Doug Clovechok, who has represented the riding of Columbia River-Revelstoke since 2017, introduced Bill M209, Indigenous Names Statutes Amendment Act, 2022, on Thursday as a way to make a change many people have been advocating for.

"It needs to be fixed. It needs to be righted," Clovechok, 66, said on Friday. "This is a way to do that."

Currently, government systems in B.C. can't incorporate diacritic marks, which are accents and symbols used to change the meaning and pronunciation of words. They are essential parts of the names of many Indigenous people.

The obstacle has been frustrating for Jess H̓áust̓i, a 35-year-old woman from the Heiltsuk Nation who lives in Bella Bella. She has been trying unsuccessfully to have her Indigenous name reflected on her identification.

"My name is my name," she said. "It should be spelled correctly, which is a matter of dignity and respect, which I think is the least Indigenous people are entitled to."

The inspiration for Clovechok's bill, which he dubs "Emme's bill," came from a Grade 12 student in Golden who wrote to her MLA in January.

Emme Abbs, 18, said she wrote the letter to Clovechok as part of a class about cultural genocide and saw the 17th call to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada as something that could be implemented with little effort.

It calls on all levels of government to "enable residential school survivors and their families to reclaim names changed by the residential school system," for free.

"So for me, this was an obvious thing that needs to get done. There's so much [of] peoples' identity and their culture and their history at stake — and their well-being," Abbs said.

Clovechok said the letter inspired him to develop his private member's bill.

"It was so articulate, so clear, in terms of the passion that she had for this," he said of Abbs' writing. "She wasn't asking for anything; she was demanding that an MLA do something about this."

Clovechok worked to narrow the focus of his bill to address the province's current inability to change names to include diacritic symbols like those in H̓áust̓i's name.

H̓áust̓i hopes Clovechuk's bill will expedite the change that the province has told her it is working toward. She was told last summer that it would take up to three years to change over the government system that requires her to anglicize her surname to Housty.

This week, an Opposition NDP MLA introduced a similar bill to Clovechok's in the Manitoba Legislature.

It is rare for a private member's bill to be passed into law in the B.C. Legislature, but Clovechok is hopeful MLAs across party lines will support it.

"I think it's a perfect opportunity for us to work together, and using Emme's passion to drive this thing," he said.

If passed, the bill would not allow provincial registers to deny the use of special symbols on government documents, meaning the province would have to expedite finding a system that allows for their inclusion.

Ministry of Citizen Services aiming for 'inclusive fonts'

On Friday, the B.C. Ministry of Citizen Services said that work is ongoing to adopt "inclusive fonts to include Indigenous languages," for things like identification documents.

The ministry did not provide a timeline for when the change would be realized, but said co-ordination was required with other government systems across Canada.

Last June, the federal government announced that Indigenous people could apply for free to use their original names on official documents, but diacritic marks cannot be incorporated, only those within the Roman alphabet and some French accents.