Official Languages Committee on Oct. 7th, 2025

[The Chair, Liberal, Yvan Baker]

Answer very quickly, please. There are ten seconds left.

[Nicole Gagnon]

Certainly. The interpreters who have been injured are working less. The ones who are afraid of being injured are offering only two days a week instead of working four days, and this jeopardizes interpretation capacity. If we are asked to work more hours on the hybrid platforms, you will lose more of them.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yvan Baker]

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu.

Mr. Bélanger will now have the floor for five minutes.

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

Good morning.

I have a question for Ms. Skup.

In your Hill Times column on August 21, you stated that eliminating the “quality index” for interpreters would open “the door to favouritism” and “unfair...dangerous procurement practices.”

Can you elaborate on that for me, please?

[Alionka Skup]

Yes. What we were referring to is not only the quality index but the procurement system. If it is closed to just the lowest bid, and we have no other controls as to who is obtaining the different assignments, that's where it can get tricky and also affect the quality of the interpretation per se, which makes it more difficult for government proceedings.

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

You spoke earlier about interpreters who have a lot of experience. Are they favoured in awarding contracts?

[Nicole Gagnon]

Favouritism is not the issue at the moment. Take the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, for example. I think it makes sense to send an interpreter who has practised law or specialized in law. At the moment, the system is based on the best interpreter profile. Yes, it would be logical to use someone who is well versed in law or is often a lead interpreter at that committee. It is not favouritism. It has nothing to do with someone having 30 years in the profession as compared to someone who has ten. If an interpreter with ten years on the job is well versed in law, it makes sense to assign them to that committee.

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

Right.

Is there a shortage of interpreters today, yes or no?

[Nicole Gagnon]

Yes. There has been a serious shortage for many years.

As I said, we are in next generation mode. The translation bureau has redoubled its efforts to find new interpreters. Yes, I think we have reached the limit of what we can provide.

I can give you an example. Last Thursday was a very busy day on the Hill. The translation bureau did not have enough interpreters for all the meetings, so it sent out an SOS to its full-time employees, offering them overtime. It is entitled to do that, just as employees are entitled to agree to work overtime or not. I don't know how many of those employees did or didn't accept the offer. Again, that jeopardizes interpreters' hearing health. There is a reason why we have safe hours of work when we work in hybrid format.

Last Thursday, did the translation bureau call on all freelance interpreters who have an open contract in Ottawa, or even outside the city? Did it call on interpreters with one-time contracts, the ones who have piecework arrangements? You will have to ask the translation bureau those questions, because that is not within AICC's purview.

What I do know is that the translation bureau was short of interpreters last week. I don't know whether it was able to provide all the services.

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

Do interpreters on contract work with parliamentary interpreters?

[The Chair, Liberal, Yvan Baker]

There is one minute left.

[Nicole Gagnon]

Yes, sir. We work together. We are teams made up of employees and freelancers. Freelancers do between 50% and 60% of the work on Parliament Hill at the moment.

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

I am trying to understand how an interpreter with less experience manages to gain experience if they are not working with other people.

[Nicole Gagnon]

As I say, we work together. Employees are not the only new interpreters. There are also new freelance interpreters. We work as a team. If the team is composed properly and an experienced interpreter, one who is familiar with the field a particular committee is studying, is included, that interpreter can oversee two new interpreters. Practice makes perfect, but there still has to be the right skills in the booth, experienced people to oversee the new ones while they are learning the job.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yvan Baker]

There are ten seconds left.

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

Thank you, Ms. Gagnon.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yvan Baker]

Thank you, Mr. Bélanger.

Colleagues, we will not have time for a third round of questions. We are going to finish this round. Ms. Mingarelli has five minutes, and we will then conclude our conversation with these witnesses.

Ms. Mingarelli, you have the floor.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank the witnesses and welcome them to the committee.

Ms. Gagnon, you talked about interpreters who work six hours a day. That is too much. I wondered what good working conditions for an interpreter in a hybrid environment would be.

[Nicole Gagnon]

Interpreters are not currently working six hours a day on the Hill. They work four hours a day on a three-person team and three hours a day with two people in the booth when it's in hybrid format. Six hours works fine when you are working in person. That is the time at the microphone. It does not take into account preparation time. A parliamentary interpreter receives their assignments between 6:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. the evening before their working day. At that point, they are ordinarily assigned to two committees. Depending on the committees they are assigned to, they may or may not receive documentation. If they do, they spend the necessary time preparing for the next day's meeting.

Good quality interpretation calls for a certain amount of preparation and we have to be able to work safely without fearing for our hearing. That is why our hours of work have been cut.

So it is not just the work in the interpretation booth; there is also all the work we have to do ahead of time in order to provide you with the best service.

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

Thank you.

How many hours of work per day, for preparation and in the booth, are you asking parliamentarians to allow for, in order to have good quality work?

[Nicole Gagnon]

Preparation time varies by committee and our knowledge of a committee's subject matters. If you are assigned to a committee you are not familiar with, or if you are just starting out, you will ordinarily want to prepare more, because you are not as confident. It depends on the documentation you receive. There are so many factors that I can't give you an exact number, but it is easily two to three hours every day.

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

Thank you.

Can artificial intelligence help you?

I imagine that the more experience you have as an interpreter, the less preparation you need; but if you have less experience, can new technologies make it easier to prepare for interpreting?

[Nicole Gagnon]

If we use translation software for documents we get in advance, that can certainly be helpful, absolutely. Again, the problem is that the software does not have a mind of its own. It will match words in French or words in English, but there absolutely has to be a human being to look over it to make sure the concepts have been properly understood and grasped. If we don't get the texts in advance, which is sometimes the case, then we can review the transcripts from previous meetings of the committee we will be interpreting. We can communicate with colleagues who are used to working for that committee to find out whether they have vocabulary that could be useful to us.

In other words, yes, it can cut preparation time, but it will never completely eliminate it.

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

Thank you.