Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in the House today to follow up on a question that I asked on January 29, 2016. At that time, I asked the current government about bilingualism and respect for the Official Languages Act. Some problems have come up recently. One of them is related to the Translation Bureau. We have been hearing more and more concerns in this regard lately. Another problem is the fact that immigrants have to pay more for language tests in French than in English.
This raises some questions, including some about the Translation Bureau. As members know, the Conservative government has a very poor track record when it comes to supporting official languages. In the past four years, 400 translation jobs have been cut. If things go on this way, another 140 jobs are expected to be lost by 2017-18, which would represent 17% of the Translation Bureau's staff. We are heading in a very worrisome direction. In addition, the Translation Bureau is contracting out more and more work, a practice that is questionable in terms of efficiency and, ultimately, the quality of the translated texts.
Unfortunately, the Liberal government did not mention its intention to change the 2015-16 plans and priorities for the Translation Bureau. That is one of my questions for my hon. colleague, the parliamentary secretary. Does he intend to change the Translation Bureau's 2015-16 plans and priorities? Unfortunately, year after year, we keep seeing more and more cuts when in fact we need a strong Translation Bureau to uphold and respect the Official Languages Act.
That being said, questions were also raised recently about the new machine translation tool that will be launched on all computers on April 1, if memory serves me correctly. This has raised a lot of questions, not only within the Translation Bureau, by the union and the employees, but also by various stakeholders who work to protect the official languages. Among others, there is Linda Cardinal, a minority languages expert at the University of Ottawa's School of Political Studies. As we know, we have a very good department at the University of Ottawa that has been doing research on official languages for a very long time. This is what Ms. Cardinal had to say about the translation tool being installed on every computer:
To me, this type of translation does not translate the spirit of the Official Languages Act, which is to promote the equal status of English and French in Canada.
Later she adds:
The purpose of this technology is to replace humans. I would say it does nothing to bring the two large linguistic communities closer together.
As we can see, this is quite worrisome and the stakeholders, experts, and academics are talking about this concern. That is why I am rising again in the House to ask the parliamentary secretary what he plans to do to ensure that the official languages are respected and that French continues to be protected across Canada. That is what I would like my colleague to answer.