From the perspective of organizing and administering, I'll be frank. Organizing and administering interpretation contracts can be challenging, depending on the rarity of the language request, but it's something the bureau has been doing—as Mr. Déry said—since 1934, and we're good at it. From an organizational perspective, we felt it was fine.
From a quality perspective—and Mr. Déry was alluding to this—the bureau doesn't have internal capacity. We don't have staff interpreters in most languages of the world. We have staff interpreters and senior interpreters in the official languages, and we cover the most commonly used foreign languages that Canada and the bureau are called upon to serve.
In other languages, when we accredit interpreters, they're what's called “accredited on file”. If my team is asked to provide interpretation for a major diplomatic event.... I don't have a Polish staff interpreter anymore, so I would probably contact chief interpreters from around the world and ask them to recommend Polish interpreters from the worldwide community of interpreters. That's what we call “accrediting on file”.
That's what we do currently with the indigenous languages. When we have a request, we have—as Mr. Déry mentioned—a pool of people who have pre-qualified in indigenous languages that we use frequently in Canada. Right now that number stands at 20 languages and some 100 or so freelancers in our pool. We would typically do that. We would ask for references from knowledgeable members of the community, and that could vary depending on the language.