Official Languages Committee on Feb. 2nd, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 14^x of the Standing Committee on Official Languages.

The committee is meeting on its study of Challenges of the Parliamentary Interpretation Service in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

To ensure an orderly meeting, I would like to outline a few rules to follow.

For those participating virtually, I would like to take this opportunity to remind all participants in this meeting that screenshots or taking photos of your screen is not permitted, and also highlight the fact that this was mentioned by Speaker Rota on September 29, 2020.

Members and witnesses may speak in the official language of their choice. Interpretation services are available for this meeting. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of “Floor”, “English” or “French”. Before speaking, click on the microphone icon to activate your own mike. When you are done speaking, please put your mike on mute to minimize any interference.

I remind everyone that all comments by members and witnesses should be addressed through the chair. When speaking, please speak slowly and clearly. Unless there are exceptional circumstances, the use of headsets with a boom microphone is mandatory for everyone participating remotely. Should any technical challenges arise, please advise the chair or the clerk. Please note that we may need to suspend for a few minutes as we need to ensure that all members are able to participate fully.

For those attending the meeting in person, masks are required unless seated and when physical distancing is not possible. Should you wish to get my attention, signal the clerk with a hand gesture, or click on the icon to request the floor. Should you wish to raise a point of order, please activate your microphone, and indicate to me clearly that you wish to raise a point of order.

I would now like to welcome our witnesses who will begin our discussions with seven and a half minutes of opening remarks, followed by rounds of questions. As is our customary process, I will let you know when you have approximately one minute left. I will also inform you that your time is up when you have about 10 seconds left.

Today we have representatives of the International Association of Conference Interpreters: Nicole Gagnon, who is its Advocacy Lead, and Jim Thompson, its Communications Counsel for the regions of Canada.

I now turn the floor over to the witnesses from the International Association of Interpreters. You have seven and a half minutes. I know that most of the witnesses have forwarded notes, but I have also seen the number of pages you have submitted to us. Those documents were sent to the members of committees so they could read them. We will devote some time to those documents during the question period.

Ms. Gagnon or Mr. Thompson, you may begin your opening remarks.

[Nicole Gagnon, Advocacy Lead, International Association of Conference Interpreters]

Mr. Chair, members of the committee, we are here this evening to discuss your right to speak in Parliament in the language of your choice, and to be heard by Canadians in the language of your choice, delivered with equal quality.

Like you, the Association we represent sees these fundamental rights as duties that cannot be compromised. Sadly, we think our founding linguistic partnership is not being respected during the pandemic as it should be.

In fact, we are at a crisis point. Since Parliament began meeting virtually in April last year, a wave of injuries has swept through the team of interpreters employed directly by the Translation Bureau. Seventy percent of those staff interpreters who responded to a survey we conducted have suffered auditory injuries during the past nine months. Injuries were so severe many had to take time off work. Of those injured, most, 62%, have not fully recovered. Public Services and Procurement Canada, or PSPC, is reported to have said that health and safety incident reports are down and no one is presently on sick leave.

Such statements hide the fact that, in the past nine months, there have been more than double the number of health and safety incident reports filed by staff interpreters compared to the previous 15 months, according to the Translation Bureau's own data. They ignore the fact that many TB staffers have given up filing complaints because little if any action comes of it. Staffers are disappointed. These statements belittle their injuries and silence their concerns. This is unacceptable. As the Prime Minister recently said, "Every employee in the Government of Canada has the right to work in a safe and healthy environment, and we will always take this very seriously."

As the ranks of Translation Bureau staffers thin, qualified freelancers are being recruited as reinforcements. Normally, freelancers are assigned to about 30% of parliamentary events, committees and the like, while staffers cover 70%. Recently, freelancers are doing a much bigger share of work on the Hill, amounting to almost half the workload in November and December.

Against this backdrop, PSPC and the Translation Bureau are weeks away from locking in contractual requirements that could expose freelancers to more of what is making staffers sick while undermining the quality of the services we can provide to Canadians. When you hear the word "contract", a collective agreement negotiation between a union and an employer may come to mind. That is not the case here. The Association is not a union and we are not negotiating anything with the PSPC and the Translation Bureau. As far as the contract is concerned, they decide what will be in it. It's a one-way street.

The Translation Bureau has floated some contractual trial balloons that are of great concern because, among other things, the TB would like to increase the hours freelancers are exposed to conditions that are making staffers sick. Of course, this is unsustainable. There is already a critical shortage of interpreters qualified to work on the Hill.

We have highly specialized training that is not common in Canada. There are only about 80 freelancers in the entire country who can do it. The Translation Bureau's approach will burn out the freelancers just as it is doing to the staffers. Then what?

The Translation Bureau has also resorted to using teams of two interpreters more often, even when the assignments are broadcast or webcast. Team strength is critical because when teams are small you increase the load each interpreter must carry. And, because we take turns at the mic, inevitably it means we will be working into our second language. Assigning interpreters so, they must work into their second language is generally regarded as one that reduces quality and, as a result, has rarely been permitted for meetings that are televised or webcast to Canadians, until now.

I have met on numerous occasions with Lucie Séguin, the CEO of the Translation Bureau. I know her to be a person of high integrity who cares deeply about the job her team is able to do with available resources. At the same time, if these trial balloons and recent practices are baked into the next freelancers' contract, it's not difficult to imagine how quality will suffer.

You will have interpreters sick with hearing injuries, working longer hours or in smaller teams, sometimes into their second language, which at least some of the time will be broadcast or televised.

The House of Commons administration may have had good reasons to select Zoom as the online platform where Parliament meets, but its suitability for delivering quality interpretation could not have been one of them. Actually, Zoom is not even recognized as an interpretation platform by the international experts who set ISO Standards. Interpreters call the sound delivered to them by Zoom and other platforms "toxic". It makes them sick with headaches, extreme exhaustion, tinnitus, nausea and other symptoms. In tests conducted by independent sound engineers comparing platforms, Zoom Standard Mode comes last.

The survey of staffers we conducted has revealed what all interpreters know: under the current conditions of distance interpreting, quality cannot be delivered in the same measure as in-person interpreting. Your proceedings have been interrupted hundreds of times since going virtual because we just can't make out what you are saying. In addition to concerns about quality, this is affecting your ability to do your work and is forcing discourse in Parliament into a single language, and it's usually English.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, interpreters have stepped up to do our essential work in Parliament, placing ourselves at risk of injury and infection. Every day, we go to the Hill in spite of the lock downs. Our duty is to bring the Official Languages Act and the Constitution to life with the work we do. We want it to be the best quality it can possibly be, in both Official Languages, even under difficult circumstances. That is why we have come before you today. And that is why we ask you to intervene to protect the quality of the service we provide to you and to Canadians.

Please urge Minister Anand, who is responsible for the Translation Bureau, to instruct her officials to take a precautionary approach to conditions for distance interpreting in the freelancers' contract they are finalizing. And further, please urge the Minister to address the critical shortage of qualified interpreters in Canada on an urgent basis and ensure the very small existing pool of Government accredited interpreters is encouraged to work in the Parliament of Canada and not actively discouraged as they have been.

Thank you. We are happy to take your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you very much, Ms. Gagnon. You stayed within the allotted time.

I would ask you please to raise or lower your microphone because we are hearing a "pop".

[Nicole Gagnon]

Do you mean an implosive consonant?

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Yes.

[Nicole Gagnon]

My apologies.

Is that a bit better?

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Josée Harrison]

I'm told yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you very much.

We will now go to the period of questions. The first round will be for six minutes.

We will begin with Mr. Blaney, the Vice-Chair of the committee.

Mr. Blaney, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I had indicated that I wanted to share my speaking time with Mr. Généreux. With your permission, I could speak in the second round.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Yes, of course.

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

Thank you very much.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Good evening, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Gagnon and Mr. Thompson, thank you very much for being with us this evening.

First of all, I am very pleased that you contacted us parliamentarians to discuss the problem you're experiencing. I also acknowledge the presence of the interpreters working here this evening.

You've taken the time to bring us up to speed on the health and safety problems you're experiencing at work. Personally, that's the angle that interests me in this discussion.

I'd also like to note that the Standing Committee on Official Languages is the most apolitical committee there is. We're in politics, and that isn't always the case, but we've been trying to prepare fairly unanimous reports for many years now.

There is no room for partisanship of any kind in the matter before us today. Our aim isn't to blame the government for what's happening to you, quite the contrary. We want to work with you to find options that will solve some, if not all, of your problems.

Ms. Gagnon you said in your opening remarks that 70% of the people you surveyed said they had suffered illness or injuries, to their hearing in particular. Can you tell us how many people responded to the survey?

[Nicole Gagnon]

If you look at page 3 of my opening remarks, you'll see a bar graph showing injuries suffered by staff interpreters and the number of interpreters who responded to the survey.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

What's important in a meeting such as this is that what appears in the documents that are sent to us is also verbalized. If possible, I'd like you to state the number of individuals that appears on your graph.

[Nicole Gagnon]

There were 51 respondents out of the some 70 interpreters on the Translation Bureau's staff.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

If I'm not mistaken, the Government of Canada currently employs 70 staffers apart from people like you who are freelance interpreters from outside the House of Comments. Is that correct?

[Nicole Gagnon]

That's correct.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

If I understand you correctly, 70% of those people have suffered injuries, and now they don't even dare complain because they won't get a response. So I understand very clearly why you've laid out your problems before this committee.

Do you know the exact number of people who are off work right now, if any?

[Nicole Gagnon]

I couldn't tell you because I'm a freelance interpreter. That's the kind of information you should be able to get from the Translation Bureau. I think there is one person on leave and two more who have been assigned to other duties to rest their ears. However, the Translation Bureau alone can confirm that information.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

I see.

If I'm not mistaken, the Translation Bureau is trying to develop contractual provisions specific to remote interpretation and, for that purpose, has turned to government agencies in Europe. Would the provisions and agreements that have suited, now suit or will suit European freelance interpreters be acceptable here in Canada since they've been verified in those government agencies?

[Nicole Gagnon]

The problem is that those European bodies don't operate in a bilingual setting such as ours. Contrary to what's done in Canada, they don't have an obligation to provide service in English and French with the same level of quality. Those organizations don't have a shortage of interpreters.

In our view, the comparison is invalid because we work in a situation where there is a shortage here. We also work with a videoconferencing platform that isn't recognized as an interpretation platform, whereas they use an actual interpretation platform in Europe.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Ms. Gagnon, what's the difference between an interpretation platform and a platform like Zoom, which we're using now?

[Nicole Gagnon]

Zoom is a videoconferencing platform to which an interpretation function has been added. In Europe, they use interpretation platforms that are designed, first and foremost, for interpretation.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

I see.

Do you know the reasons why the government chose to use Zoom?

[Nicole Gagnon]

I couldn't tell you, Mr. Généreux.

The House of Commons Administration must have had good reasons for choosing the Zoom platform. Its representatives will be testifying before you this evening.

All I can tell you is what we've seen. The Zoom platform doesn't offer you high-quality service because we can't hear what you say clearly, and we have to interrupt you, among other things.