Madam Chair, members of the committee, good afternoon.
Thank you for this opportunity to express our views on this very important matter.
My name is André Picotte, and I am acting vice-president of the Canadian Association of Professional Employees, or CAPE. I am normally the vice-president for CAPE's TR group. I'm accompanied by Paule Antonelli, Local 900 acting president and interpreters' representative on CAPE Local 900 Council.
CAPE is the third largest union in the federal public sector. It represents more than 23,000 economists and policy analysts, statisticians, Library of Parliament researchers, analysts at the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer and some 80 professional interpreters in the federal public sector.
I'd like to say an enthusiastic hello to the interpreters providing interpretation service today. I'd also like to thank them and their colleagues for their outstanding work.
Since Parliament switched to hybrid meetings in reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic, the interpreters' work has been dogged by technical issues and the failure of certain participants to comply with technical standards. Since 2020, hearing issues have forced 33 of 70 official language interpreters to take some 349 sick leave days. Every month, approximately 10 interpreters are reassigned to other duties on the advice of their physicians.
CAPE worked with the Translation Bureau and members of all the parties and appeared before several parliamentary committees. As no viable solution to the interpreters' health and safety issues was proposed, CAPE ultimately filed a complaint with the labour program of Employment and Social Development Canada on February 1, 2022.
Labour program representatives concluded that the Translation Bureau had failed in its duty to protect the health and safety of its employees, having regard to the new technological risks that had been clearly identified in the report on audio quality on Parliament Hill that the National Research Council Canada, the NRC, submitted to Parliament in October 2021.
Parliament's audiovisual services team, which strives to improve the quality of the sound transmitted to interpreters, addressed the problems associated with the incompatibilities between the system in place and the Zoom platform. Even though interpreters now have access to the full range of frequencies required under ISO standards—that fact remains to be confirmed by tests conducted by NRC, which were postponed until the Thanksgiving break—no improvement in sound quality has been observed since NRC conducted the tests in May 2021. Stéphan Aubé, chief information officer of the Digital Services and Real Property unit of the House of Commons, freely admitted that the sound obtained during remote sessions never met ISO standards.
Furthermore, the Transition Bureau has yet to apply the 2022 government conference interpretation guidelines providing that interpreters should never provide interpretation service where basic technical requirements are not met.
In conclusion, Madam Chair and members of the committee, I would repeat that interpreters are your principal allies in faithfully relaying, in the other official language, the message, with all its subtleties, that you wish to transmit to your electors and other Canadians. In-person meetings are less trying for them because the sound is better, and problems occur when a single member of Parliament or witness participates in the meeting remotely.
However, as committee meetings and hybrid sessions are likely to continue, it is imperative that health impacts on our professional member employees and their ability to continue working in their field be limited.
What must be done for people to continue participating?
The quality of sound transmitted by the audiovisual system must be improved and care must be taken to ensure that people participating remotely meet basic technical requirements.
Once again, I would like to thank the interpreters for doing their best in incredibly difficult conditions since the start of the pandemic.
Thank you for your time and attention. We will be pleased to answer your questions.