Declaration of Emergency committee  I would have to verify that. All cabinet documents are translated. Absolutely, cabinet documents themselves would be translated in both official languages.

Declaration of Emergency committee  I appreciate your question, Senator.

Declaration of Emergency committee  Not at all. I appreciate the honest question. I think we tried to provide a proposed path early on in the testimony, respecting the fact—maybe just to differentiate from the business—that we are not necessarily here to be your advisers. We are here to answer questions. Ultimately, you have a team who provide you with advice.

Declaration of Emergency committee  I would hope—I saw it in the motion that invited us—that there is some discussion of, within five days, a prioritization or a list of documents. We would like to work with whomever you ask us to work with. We're happy to work with the clerk of the committee directly to actually walk through what we have and make some determinations as to what would be appropriate in terms of how consensus will be reached by the committee behind the scenes in terms of what you would like from us.

Declaration of Emergency committee  The role of the translation bureau would be to then translate that. They would give us a quote. I think we would want to come back and make sure that everyone, with open eyes, knows what it would cost, what we think the translation would cost. Ultimately, if we were told that that's what you want, we would try to start working on that.

Declaration of Emergency committee  I'm not sure what documents are on the website. I would have to see. I think we would have to agree on a definition of “never saw the light of day”. They were provided to the commission of inquiry, which reviewed them and had unprecedented access to cabinet confidences and top secret documents to do its work.

Declaration of Emergency committee  As your colleague mentioned, I do know that we have received multiple complaints. I was told in my briefing that one of them was from a member of the committee, so I appreciate that disclosure. We receive those complaints, and we answer them as best we can, appreciating the limitations of our knowledge of the interior workings of the commission.

Declaration of Emergency committee  I'm not sure that I fully understand the question. They were responsible for managing the evidence and managing how it was archived. My understanding from legal experts—and I do not claim to be one—is that this information is not required to be translated, in keeping with the Evidence Act.

Declaration of Emergency committee  Absolutely, and that evidence is actually on the website and available for public consumption. It is just not translated on the website. Absolutely, somebody was managing that, and somebody managed all of the information that was transferred to us. However, it was not necessarily transferred to us in a format that can easily allow us to respond to questions, like an index, depending on the definition of an index.

Declaration of Emergency committee  I'll start by saying that our role is to provide an arm's-length service. We provide them with tools. We provide them with advice. Ultimately, they decide how to run each individual meeting. I am not aware—but I am not speaking definitively on this—that they translated any evidence from French to English, as I think I understood from your question.

Declaration of Emergency committee  Absolutely. We do provide counsel in terms of the use of official languages. We would absolutely recommend, and are recommending for the current commission, that any public hearings have simultaneous interpretation as part of that. To your point, there was simultaneous interpretation, as I understand it.

Declaration of Emergency committee  I take my responsibility very seriously in terms of supporting the commission, and all commissions. I would echo what you said. I worked with Judge Rouleau. He is a fantastic human being, and he was wonderful to work with. I would say that there's a limit to what we can do in terms of support.

Declaration of Emergency committee  The translation was for external-facing documents, such as on their website. Everything but the evidence—and I understand that is in keeping with the Canada Evidence Act—was translated into both official languages. The report itself is in both official languages, and interpretation was provided for all of the individual events.

Declaration of Emergency committee  I will turn to the experts at the translation bureau to explain how they use AI.

Declaration of Emergency committee  I would have to verify whether they used any private translation. I'm not aware that they did. They may have used some private translation for parts of the final report, just due to the time crunch. I would just reiterate that their obligations under the Official Languages Act are for the external documents: the documents they put on their website and the documents they released to the public.