Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The witnesses have said a lot of things, and many issues keep coming up, but different realities must also be considered.
There is the reality of public servants, who have lengthy documents to translate and who have to render them in perfect French. Then, there is our reality as parliamentarians. When there are debates and the government has to draft speeches, we usually receive the texts through the usual administrative channels.
I experienced this when I was a parliamentary secretary, for official languages and for the status of women. We often received documents five minutes before we had to be in the House. Everything was in English. What choice did we have? We used Google Translate. We tried to get an overview of what the text said. Then we corrected it to the best of our abilities. That is our reality.
My question is the following. The people who spoke to the committee about Portage said that it was not intended to produce documents for wide distribution. So what would be the best way to proceed and to save time, for government workers and for us, as parliamentarians? Things happen quickly. We all have tablets, we receive documents, we share things, and sometimes we do not write very well in French. This is a problem we encounter frequently.
How can an excellent translation be produced if someone writes poorly in the language to begin with?
Mrs. Lanthier and Ms. Bossé, what, in your opinion, would be the best approach and the most effective way of protecting the French language in light of the advent of social media and the speed at which we often have to work in Parliament?