Official Languages Committee on Oct. 7th, 2025

[Lucie Levesque, Vice-President, Policy and Corporate Services, Translation Bureau]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Regarding the current process, we have talked about the availability, language profile and security clearance criteria. Those are the criteria that will be remaining in the next process as well.

Regarding the quality index, that will not necessarily be a criterion, but it is still going to be measured. It will just be done a little differently. Cases of inadequate performance or breach of the code of conduct will be taken into consideration in the next process. Where qualifications, accreditation, security clearance and so on are equal, we will really select the person who offers the best value for money.

[Jim Belanger, Conservative, Sudbury East—Manitoulin—Nickel Belt, ON]

Right.

When a request is made for interpretation services, why can you not decide what it is worth and what can be paid?

[Jean-François Lymburner]

That is not how today's marketplace works and that is not what we do. What we do is offer availabilities. You heard earlier that according to surveys and other trends, we cannot guarantee that there will actually be private firms that are interested. However, I would like to note that while these private firms do include sole proprietorships, they also include firms made up of several interpreters.

[Jim Belanger, Conservative, Sudbury East—Manitoulin—Nickel Belt, ON]

Do you intend to increase the number of government employees for interpretation? Is there a shortage of interpreters?

[Jean-François Lymburner]

That is a very good question.

We face that challenge on a daily and also an annual basis. I am well aware that the translation bureau is not the only one in this situation. Take an example like the extension that happened earlier this year. We were able to meet all the needs, because Parliament continued to function, largely with our employees. However, with the G7 summits that come back around to Canada every five or six or seven years, we also have to use private firms. There are special requests. There are commissions that have been held recently and in the past. We then have to supplement our staff, in partnership with private firms. I think that is a sound capacity management approach that enables us to deal with fluctuations in demand. That is what the bureau does.

[Jim Belanger, Conservative, Sudbury East—Manitoulin—Nickel Belt, ON]

I would like to ask a question about artificial intelligence.

At the moment, I do not have the impression that interpretation would be done properly in all situations. How long do you think it will take to incorporate it into the system?

[The Chair, Liberal, Yvan Baker]

You have about 45 seconds left, Mr. Bélanger.

[Jean-François Lymburner]

There are several aspects. Obviously, there is security, which is important; that is one thing.

There is also the issue of conveying emotion, humour, intent and tone of voice. At the UN and the European Parliament and in Switzerland, human conference interpreters do the work.

Is progress being made? Yes. I attend many conferences at which we are shown the advances made. At the bureau, we are following the conversation closely, together with our colleagues in the House. Subtitling is also evolving. You have surely seen that it is getting a lot better. There are people who prefer to read. We are monitoring the situation, and all of this is being driven by advances in artificial intelligence.

That being said, we at the bureau want to assure you that it respects our language, Canadian French and Canadian English, based on translation bureau data.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yvan Baker]

Mr. Bélanger, your time is up. Thank you.

I will now give the floor to Ms. Mingarelli for five minutes.

[Giovanna Mingarelli, Liberal, Prescott—Russell—Cumberland, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Lymburner, I am going to carry on from Mr. Bélanger's question. In your presentation, you talked about GCtranslate, a tool that can help translators and improve the federal government's translations. What departments have access to it? Will the general public have access to it soon?

[Jean-François Lymburner]

That is a very good question.

I would first like to say that the translation bureau has been using artificial intelligence for decades. Weather reports have been translated automatically by the bureau for over 20 years now. Since 2017, the bureau's language professionals have been using artificial intelligence in their work at the bureau, but, like society, we have evolved. We get a lot of requests for self-service, but not at any price.

We have worked on a prototype that we were able to train using the data accumulated by the translation bureau, and not just Hansard. The translation bureau actually has data by subject field. We trained the tool, and our language professionals determined that the quality was better than the tools. What the employees had to do is what you maybe do on vacation: go to Google, do a translation here and there, and give it a try. Now, the employees who are able to use our tool know it is secure and is based on the translation bureau's Canadian language, but also that it is easy and fairly simple to access.

Regarding departments, I don't want to misspeak, but I think there is the Privy Council, the Department of Finance, Canadian Heritage, the RCMP and the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada. They are the first federal institutions we have shared the tool with. We have already tried it at Public Services and Procurement Canada, and in the space of four months, in a department with 20,000 employees, we translated over 70 million words using our tool.

The translation bureau continues to get mission-critical requests for important documents that call for the expertise of a language professional.

I hope that answers your question.

[Giovanna Mingarelli, Liberal, Prescott—Russell—Cumberland, ON]

Yes, thank you.

Will the public have access to it?

[Jean-François Lymburner]

Yes. I am the CEO of the translation bureau. We spoke earlier about francophone minorities outside Quebec or anglophone minorities in Quebec. The translation bureau uses a language portal to reach out to Canadian families where there are a number of tools. It is one of the pages most often visited on the government websites. These are tools in English and French that deal with writing and languages. On the portal, there is a tool called Termium, a terminology tool that is known worldwide. When I leave Canada, people do not always talk to me about what we are doing, but they talk a lot about Termium, a tool that is similar to a dictionary.

Would it be possible to have a translation tool made available to Canadians? I think that in this field, it is not all that crazy to think about possibly offering that service. At the moment, we are trying to serve the 350,000 employees in the public service and 100 departments and agencies, but it is still high quality English and French. There are no other countries with two official languages such as French and English and have translation bureau data. I would like to be able to participate in an effort to make it available to Canadians in future.

[Giovanna Mingarelli, Liberal, Prescott—Russell—Cumberland, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yvan Baker]

Are you finished, Ms. Mingarelli?

[Giovanna Mingarelli, Liberal, Prescott—Russell—Cumberland, ON]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yvan Baker]

Thank you, Ms. Mingarelli.

Mr. Beaulieu, you now have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

I would like to come back to my earlier question. Would it be possible to use interpreters who are not accredited for services to departments?

[Jean-François Lymburner]

That is a good question.

I think the previous witnesses talked about how there was a shortage of staff one day. When a committee meeting lasts an extra 21 minutes, a whole series of actions are taken and we have to send a new team. So we sometimes have to deny departments the services of our interpreters, who are, I repeat, the best. We know them and we are proud of them.

In those situations, the department is left to its own devices. There are very good firms that offer interpretation services, but they do not use the same criteria as the ones used by the translation bureau. For some services, like a team meeting, there are no security requirements. There are services that can be purchased externally that are appropriate for the type of interpretation needed.

Ms. Levesque is going to talk about this. She is our security expert.

[Lucie Levesque]

I am not really going to address the security issue. I would actually like to add a qualification.

The services we offer other departments are optional.

If you like, I would suggest that you visit the CanadaBuys website. You will see that tenders for interpretation services are issued directly by other departments. Some departments are already using the interpretation services that are available. They put their own contracts in place in order to get those services.

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

At the moment, you have no say about quality, is that right?

[Lucie Levesque]

No.

[Jean-François Lymburner]

We are sometimes consulted.

There are other types of interpretation, such as community interpretation. We have colleagues in passport offices and so on who need other kinds of interpreters. That is not what we offer at the translation bureau. However, we certainly have the expertise needed to give them advice and guidance. The same is true for sign languages. Demand is increasing, as I said. The bureau does it to support you, but we do not have the capacity to support all departments and agencies.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yvan Baker]

You have 20 seconds left, Mr. Beaulieu.

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Do you do regular evaluations of the quality of the work done by interpreters in Parliament?