Evidence of meeting #100 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was language.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Chief Executive Officer, Translation Bureau, Department of Public Works and Government Services
If we have a request by the chamber to provide interpretation, we would provide interpretation.
Chief Executive Officer, Translation Bureau, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Okay.
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
Thank you both for your presence today and your testimony.
I'd like to follow up on Mr. Saganash's last question along the same line of questioning as Mr. Graham's.
This is new to me. Am I understanding this correctly? If a member is going to speak in the House and asks for interpretation in a certain language, and they provide the text ahead of time, do you provide that interpretation on the member of Parliament's request?
Chief Executive Officer, Translation Bureau, Department of Public Works and Government Services
As I mentioned, if we're asked to provide interpretation in an indigenous or any foreign language and we don't have the internal capacity, as Mr. Ball explained, the member would request it through the chamber. Then the chamber, if they agreed—and that's a process of Parliament—would turn to the translation bureau and tell us that we need interpretation from, say, Inuktitut to English.
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
When you say “the chamber”, what do you mean?
Chief Executive Officer, Translation Bureau, Department of Public Works and Government Services
It's Parliament, the clerk and the process internal to Parliament. It's the same as what they did in the Senate for the pilot project. They requested that we provide indigenous language interpretation.
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
Right now you have not ever been asked for that. Even if a member asked for interpretation, you would have needed the clerk to make that request to you before you could provide interpretation.
Chief Executive Officer, Translation Bureau, Department of Public Works and Government Services
We need the administration of Parliament to make a request to us as a service provider because we're here to provide services. We have provided indigenous languages interpretation 33 times in the last two years to Parliament, so it did happen that we were asked to do that.
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
Okay.
With respect to the question of capacity now, I can understand the importance of the code, Mr. Ball, that you mentioned. Just so that I'm clear, is there something in the code that would allow an interpreter to interpret based on a text if the permission was given ahead of time from the organization, the House of Commons? We understand that your code exists, but we are asking that you provide the interpretation based on the text. This goes to capacity. Say, for example, it was too difficult to get with all the dialects of an indigenous language that's spoken and the text is provided to someone to interpret. If the House of Commons said, we would like you to do this and your understanding was that you're just going to interpret based on the text, would your code allow you to do that?
Acting Vice-President, Translation Bureau, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Not to give you a grey answer, but typically a translation is a translation of a text. We would ask the person who's provided the translation to read it. Therefore, the translation bureau could provide the translation of the text and we could read it, yes. But when we're given a text that we haven't translated, for the interpreter, it puts them in an awkward situation ethically because they're reading something they don't necessarily understand.
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
Okay.
With respect to the code, for you to fulfill your obligations under the code, you wouldn't be able to do that. You wouldn't be able to take a text that someone's given to an interpreter and have that interpreter interpret based on that text, not understanding the first language that's being used.
Acting Vice-President, Translation Bureau, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Correct. It would be awkward for someone to read a text they didn't understand.
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
Right, okay.
Do you have any issues with respect to capacity, because this committee has heard testimony with respect to how there are various dialects. I understand and appreciate starting...and maybe the start is on a smaller scale. Could I maybe have your comments on that with respect to what's a reasonable start-up? With respect to dialects, if you had that issue, is there the potential that someone could bring in an interpreter who would be acceptable to you? Is there some sort of process whereby that can happen?
How many languages and what sort of an approach would you suggest to this committee as a start?
Chief Executive Officer, Translation Bureau, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Personally, I would suggest we—as in the rest of our lives and in business—start small and build on successes.
Mr. Wolvengrey, a professor of Algonquian languages and linguistics from Regina, who testified here earlier on video conference, mentioned that it would be almost impossible if you were to ask us for 90 languages. But if you start with the languages that are spoken by members of Parliament already, then if you have a guest, we can work on maybe finding an interpreter for that guest.
The first step is the languages that are spoken already by members of Parliament, and then we can start building from there. Then if you have guests who speak a dialect that we don't have, I would say we need advance notice. We haven't refused anybody so far, so with all our connections and partnerships with communities, we have been able to fulfill all the requests.
Now it's been 33 since 2016. It's not 300. But the more structured the approach will be, the more chances we have to fulfill all the requests.
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
Right, okay.
What's your suggestion of a reasonable time? You're saying a reasonable turnaround time. What would that be? It's been suggested 48 hours. Is that a reasonable time for a request?
Chief Executive Officer, Translation Bureau, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Yes. Forty-eight hours for requests that are common indigenous languages, and where we have local interpreters, is a lot easier.
Again, if we don't have a constant demand from Parliament, these interpreters are not waiting and sitting at home. In the case of this committee, there was Kevin Lewis who did interpret, and he's not an interpreter we usually call upon.
Chief Executive Officer, Translation Bureau, Department of Public Works and Government Services
The interpreter we called upon had another engagement. He couldn't make it. We asked him if he could suggest someone. That referral is how we got Mr. Lewis, who I believe, from what I read in the notes, did a good interpretation. We work with the community to try to find the right interpreter, but if we had a structured demand, that would be a lot easier.
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
Okay. That's very good.
How long would it take you to get to capacity? Say, for example, that we suggested this to every member in the House who speaks an indigenous language and we offered that member the right to speak in their language. How long would it take you to get up to capacity for us to implement that?
Chief Executive Officer, Translation Bureau, Department of Public Works and Government Services
From my knowledge right now, there are three members of Parliament who speak indigenous languages.
Chief Executive Officer, Translation Bureau, Department of Public Works and Government Services
It wouldn't be too hard for us.
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
Are you saying that you could do it in a week?
