(Ottawa) New alarm bells are ringing on Parliament Hill over treatment reserved for the French language. On the one hand, the Privy Council Office claims it has no obligation to ensure that federal government documents requested by a House of Commons committee are in both official languages. On the other hand, an association of interpreters is trying to hide its concerns that the House of Commons plans to bring in non-certified staff to interpret parliamentary proceedings remotely.
Posted at 12:19 p.m
Joël-Denis Bellavance La Presse
Melanie Marquis The press
At a time when Statistics Canada is confirming a further decline in French in Quebec and across the country, many are concerned about the Trudeau government’s sometimes conflicting signals about respect for both official languages.
The Privy Council Office (PCO), the prime minister’s department in Ottawa, claims it has no official language requirement when a committee requests documents from it.
According to the PCO, that responsibility rests with the Law Clerk of the House of Commons, who must review the content of documents before they are distributed to ensure the information does not violate privacy and national security, among other things.
This is the position defended by the PCO during the inquiry conducted by the Office of the Commissioner for Official Languages following a complaint by Conservative MP Alain Rayes on the issue last year.
PHOTO CATHERINE LEFEBVRE, SPECIAL COLLABORATION
Alain Rayes, Conservative MP for Riding Richmond-Arthabaska in the House of Commons from Canada
Mr Rayes filed the complaint after the PCO turned over hundreds of thousands of pages of English-only documents to the Standing Health Committee, which decided to investigate the Trudeau administration’s handling of the November 2020 pandemic.
According to Mr Rayes, by doing this the PCO has broken the spirit and the letter of the Official Languages Act and disregarded its language obligations.
In a preliminary investigation report available to La Presse, the office of the Commissioner for Official Languages agrees with the PCO because it gave the documents in question to the clerk and not the clerk of the House of Commons.
PCO argues that according to the wording of the order, the clerk, not PCO, was required to formally submit the documents to the House of Commons. According to the PCO, the legal trainee submitted all documents in both official languages to the House of Commons.
Excerpt from the preliminary investigation report of the official language officer
In his defence, the BCP claimed to have played a “coordinating role” with the services affected by the order to produce documents related to the management of the pandemic.
Asked about this, MP Alain Rayes denounced the BCP’s position, stressing that it was responsible for federal bureaucracy and needed to show leadership.
“For technical reasons, the commissioner did not uphold the complaint. But that doesn’t remove the absurdity of the situation. This further demonstrates the inconsistency of the Trudeau administration in ensuring respect for the country’s two official languages,” Mr Rayes said.
He recalled that the Trudeau administration had appointed a non-French-speaking governor-general, Mary Simon, and also entrusted the post of lieutenant governor of New Brunswick, the country’s only bilingual province, to a monolingual English-speaker.
Interruptions for interpretation
French also risks being tarnished in parliamentary debates, the International Association of Conference Interpreters in Canada (AIIC Canada) warns, following the results of a survey conducted among several dozen government-certified interpreters.
The fact-finding was carried out while the House of Commons is involved in a pilot project that would allow the hiring of interpreters who are not qualified to the translation agency’s standards and who will be subject to an assessment next autumn.
An overwhelming majority of respondents, 97%, warn that this is “an unfortunate initiative that will undermine service quality,” a situation made worse by the retirement of 49% of survey respondents within five years, it says in the document released to the media on Wednesday.
And make no mistake: it’s not the English language that would suffer from a drop in the quality of interpretation services on Parliament Hill, says Nicole Gagnon, spokeswoman for AIIC Canada.
“Of course it’s always the French who suffer because the majority are English speakers. I don’t see how it could be otherwise. So one of two things: either the country becomes monolingual, or the country is entitled to a bad or inaccurate translation,” claims Ms Gagnon.