Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I apologize for being late, and I apologize for having missed the witnesses' presentation. As I arrived, I heard part of the translation Mr. Godin read.
I think it is important to tell you the extent to which this problem concerns us. Once again, we really have to see how bad the translation is. My colleague Marcel Proulx had his biography translated. The phrase “Marcel Proulx, qui vient de l'Orignal en Ontario,” was translated by “Marcel Proulx from Moose, Ontario.” The phrase “avec ses trois fils” was translated by “with his three wires”.
This is completely unacceptable, and this is something we have to keep saying again and again. This is so bad that we have to keep saying it. The other day I was at the Ottawa Airport and on the loudspeaker I heard, “Merci de ton patience”. This has nothing to do with you, but it is a matter of respect from one of the two official languages. If people at the Ottawa Airport hear this, they'll just laugh at us. At this point, we are turning ourselves into a laughing stock.
I think that your machine isn't working. I apologize for not hearing your presentation, but I feel that this country's francophones should not be prepared to accept translations like those we have received. In Ottawa, almost everything is translated from English to French. As French-speaking members of Parliament, we are often forced to wait for the translation. We wait patiently. We are ready to wait, provided that we get a quality product. As it is, that already constitutes a compromise of sorts.
I also believe that translations like these send a wrong message to French-speaking members of Parliament and Canadians. They send the message that these are second-class citizens. This is an important point. And there's worse—it sends officials the message that they are allowed to publish translations that are completely unacceptable. We have been trying to tell officials to speak French and take courses, we are encouraging them to become bilingual, but we are ready to accept documents that are full of mistakes.
That is a real problem, as far as I am concerned. If the issue is costs, let's get rid of the machine and hire more people to produce translations that make sense. You are trying to improve the machine, but for the past few years you have had no success in that. If it still isn't working, you should get rid of it and do what you need to do to give Canadians and members of Parliament translations that make sense.
I'm wondering whether you keep the machine to save money. I imagine the only reason to have a machine to do the work normally done by translators is to save money. Is that your primary concern?