Official Languages Committee on April 4th, 2017

[Sylvie Champagne]

Certainly, when lawyers prepare their cases, in both Quebec and Ontario, they read the two versions of the legislation. They can make arguments based on the fact that a section doesn't have the same meaning in English and French. At that point, the issue must be brought before the court to determine the actual intention of the legislator. Obviously, the fact that the two versions don't have the same meaning causes issues.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

This boils down to your lawyer colleagues' ability to translate. In response to my colleague's question, you said there was no school or environment that supported this type of work. Where are your lawyer colleagues, the ones who do translation, trained?

In the federal government, it's a specialty. Some lawyers do only translation. Some translate from English to French, and others specialize in translating from French to English to ensure consistency. This capacity also exists in Ontario. What about in Quebec?

[Claudia P. Prémont]

The Quebec government tells us that it's extremely difficult to find jurilinguists because the real jurilinguists work on the Ontario side, in Ottawa. They aren't necessarily interested in working in Quebec. It's a very real difficulty that must be dealt with.

In this context, the people who are currently translating legislation don't necessarily have jurilinguist training. They're translators, but not necessarily lawyers, or they're perfectly bilingual lawyers, but not necessarily translators.

I referred to an agreement earlier. The Bar of Montreal is even ready to consider that a perfectly bilingual civil lawyer would be able to do a good job. We're not talking about someone who has translation training, but about an anglophone civil lawyer.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

The federal government and other provinces, especially New Brunswick and Ontario, have created this capacity and expertise. However, in Quebec, work still needs to be done. You said that, in Quebec, some lawyers still do translation even though they don't have any translation training, and that some translators do a bit of legal translation even though they don't have any legal training.

[Claudia P. Prémont]

From what I understand, it's very difficult to recruit people who have this training.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

Thank you, Mr. Lefebvre.

This concludes today's meeting.

Ms. Prémont and Ms. Champagne, thank you for your contribution to the committee.

[Claudia P. Prémont]

Thank you.

[Sylvie Champagne]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Denis Paradis]

I want to remind the committee members that we'll be starting Thursday's meeting by looking at Mr. Choquette's motions. We'll then continue the consideration of the draft report we started this morning.

Thank you, everyone.

The meeting is adjourned. We'll see each other on Thursday.