Official Languages committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, Mr. President. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen of the committee and of the staff. I must thank the committee for the invitation to be part of your work today. At the outset, I thought about doing my speech in both languages and switching from one to t

Official Languages committee  Let me start. In terms of the translation of the judgments, it's not that we refuse to translate the rulings depending on whether they are important or not. Instead, it is a right granted to citizens to request the translation of a ruling. For instance, in a case with an angloph

Official Languages committee  If you don't mind, I will not tell you which Canadian provinces are doing the work properly and which ones are not. As I see it, it is basically done according to the demand. In Ontario, many judgments are rendered in French. It is much easier in Ontario to have a francophone jud

Official Languages committee  I'm sorry, but I don't know the answer to that question.

Official Languages committee  That's true, but there's also the issue of delays. If the trial level decision is not in the requester's language, it is possible that the person in question may receive the translation after the appeal period.

Official Languages committee  The current process at the Shared Services Centre of Quebec (CSPQ) is problematic in terms of quality, the delay for the revision by a judge and the delivery of the judgment.

Official Languages committee  Yes. The Quebec ombudsman has prepared a report on that. The Government of Quebec then agreed to compensate someone who had been prejudiced by delays in translation.

Official Languages committee  In fact, the person had to pay extra fees to file the appeal because they had to do so before they received the translation of the judgment.

Official Languages committee  I can start by giving you the numbers on the funding that was granted, because I think I forgot to do so. In 2010-2011, the government provided $200,000; in 2011-2012, $200,000. Then there was a phasing-out of funding: $70,000 in 2012-2013, and $50,000 in 2013-2014. Earlier, I m

Official Languages committee  I would say that the outcome is much more important than the process. We have recently applauded the fact that the government has finally heard the requests for bilingualism to be part of the criteria for the Supreme Court appointment process. There was some debate about what wa

Official Languages committee  That grant was a one-time deal. There was an annual amount of $200,000 for two years. The funding was then phased out over two years to bring it all back to zero. However, SOQUIJ had begun to translate the judgments before that. It started the work in 2003. When federal assistan

Official Languages committee  That's right.

Official Languages committee  It's been since the 2013-2014 fiscal year.

Official Languages committee  There are actually fewer services. We have gone back to the basic services provided before we received the federal assistance.

Official Languages committee  That is an excellent question. I'm not sure whether Mr. Bloom is familiar with the history. I don't know the details.