This has often come up in the past, and while it may seem a bit onerous, the staff will instruct all witnesses many times to make sure they bring documents in advance so that we can have them translated. Some witnesses just simply don't.
It makes things very uncomfortable, because often at committee someone will pass a motion to say, “Let's just please accept this”. In 90% to 95% of the cases it's in English, and it puts some of our francophone members at a great disadvantage if they say “yes” to make everything move along and to get along, and then they just don't have the information in front of them.
For our unilingual anglophone friends, I'd say, imagine the reverse, that someone comes in to testify, speaks entirely in French, presents a complicated document in French, and you feel under pressure to just simply accept it.
The NDP's tradition has been very strict on this, that we don't allow it. That's within the rules of the House, and it's just a fairness thing.
There may be the occasional one-off where there is something small or it's a graph or a picture with a description. For those kinds of things we'll try to make concessions. However, my general instruction is a pretty hard line, which is unusual for us, but on this one it's pretty clear. Someone is put at a huge disadvantage if they don't have it and if, when it comes up, they feel pressured to vote for it to be allowed. It's not great for unilingual francophone members in particular. That seems to be the overwhelming number of cases. I'm sure it happens in reverse, but it's usually that way.