While preparing, I contacted a number of representatives of several departments and asked them always to check the facts. To answer your first question, our employees never receive the French versions of documents within a reasonable timeframe. That's a point we've often raised and that I myself raised when I was at the department.
However, we see that departments have two ways of viewing the matter and two ways of acting. When some of them complete a study or have just reviewed directives, they say they'll wait for the translation before they send documents to everyone. I congratulate them for doing so. However, other departments initially send out documents in English, and then employees are forced to issue a reminder a few days or weeks later saying they haven't received the documents in French. They don't really feel like paying to have them translated.
As you know, English takes precedence over French in collective agreements, directives and regulations. However, if we want to offer Canadians service in both languages, our francophone employees must be well informed and know exactly what the situation is. This is all the more important in the context of the pandemic because the information often concerns health and safety.
Now, as to whether the translations are always well done, I can't give you an answer since I haven't been able to verify the two models. However, when unilingual anglophone managers addressed a mixed group of anglophones and francophones, I was told that the boss said, “Bonjour, comment ça va?” and then continued in English, as though he had ticked his French-participation box and could now move on to something else.
In many instances as well, administrative assistants are bilingual and translate news releases attached to emails and memoranda. Otherwise, as I said at the outset, people sometimes notice that the translation is somewhat awkward. You know as well as I do that applications like Google Translate don't always produce good results, and that can cause confusion in many instances.