Declaration of Emergency committee  My understanding of the Canada Evidence Act, as it has been explained to me.... I will preface every answer by saying that I am not a lawyer and I do not wish to entertain a legal debate with a number of lawyers in the room. My understanding is that the Canada Evidence Act says that you have to post it or you should post it in the language it was submitted in.

Declaration of Emergency committee  I'm saying that my understanding is that, when it's posted on a website and just received, it needs to be kept in the language it is received in, that it's not translated.

Declaration of Emergency committee  I would add, if I could, that witnesses were given the option to appear in the language of their choice as well, so some witnesses appeared in English and some appeared in French.

Declaration of Emergency committee  To the best of my recollection, I cannot remember any commission I've been part of that has had a request like this. Certainly I can say definitively for translation, this has never happened, that we've been asked for something that would cost tens of millions of dollars to translate.

Declaration of Emergency committee  It is on the translation piece that I don't want to speak for my colleagues. We could certainly produce the list in a matter of weeks. For the translation piece, we would have to look at it a little bit. It's 152,000 documents with a short title and a little bit of information, but that would still take some time.

Declaration of Emergency committee  I do not recall exactly when I became aware of the request. I was not part of this committee work originally. I do know that in the early fall, a letter was being drafted and sent to this committee responding to that request. I don't want to speculate. I don't know if that's related to Parliament adjourning and the timing.

Declaration of Emergency committee  I can't speak to what happened over the summer. I can speak to the fall. The recollection I have of being involved was that we drafted a letter and we sent it to the committee. The committee, I believe, responded, and we responded a second time to try to articulate the costs of various options.

Declaration of Emergency committee  I will confess that I don't spend a lot of time on the website. I think we would have known going in, when it was handed over to us, that they uploaded the evidence in the language it was received in. My understanding is that this is in keeping with the Evidence Act and that there are actually concerns around doing translation that may change the meaning of evidence.

Declaration of Emergency committee  Thank you for the question and thank you for your time. I think there are two parts to the question: One is what the commission did and one is what we have done in the past nine months or whatever the period has been. In terms of what the commission did, I'm really not in a position to speak for what Justice Rouleau did.

Declaration of Emergency committee  That is a very good point, and one that was part of the reason why we wanted to put the dollar value in there. There's no question that PCO would not have the ability to spend $16 million on translation without funding approved by Parliament. There's no question, whatever this committee were to ask for, if it was a large number like that, that we would need to put in a funding request to the Department of Finance and we would need to come to Parliament to seek that funding.

Declaration of Emergency committee  Thank you for that. I think that would depend on the total amount. If we were talking $16 million, I think my—

Declaration of Emergency committee  I think we could find a couple of million dollars. I think two or three million dollars we'd be able to find, especially where we are in the fiscal year. If that was split over two fiscal years, as an example, a million and a half each year, we could certainly try to find that.

Declaration of Emergency committee  It would have been sent in the language it was available in. If it was a cabinet document that was translated, it would have been available in both official languages. If it was a memo that was created in English, it would have been sent as an English document. If it was a memo that was created in French, it would have been sent as a French document.

Declaration of Emergency committee  I would have to verify, but I believe it was in English, yes. That is not the same as a memorandum to cabinet, which is required to be translated in both official languages. Individual memos can be sent up in French or English. In my experience, there's a mix of the two, depending on the topic and depending on the originator.

Declaration of Emergency committee  Senator, perhaps you can clarify where you're seeing that the documents were provided in English only and not in both official languages.