Information & Ethics committee  All I can say is that a long road is ahead of us. We must believe in the potential of public service employees and give them all the tools required to make public data open.

Information & Ethics committee  Let’s just say that my political position on language and bilingualism is perhaps different from that of the Canadian government. My language of use is French and I access any document around the world, whether in French, Spanish, German or English. If I need to have it translate

Information & Ethics committee  Mrs. Thaï Thi Lac, I am definitely not referring to something like my testimony from today. I know that it will be translated within 24 hours. But should we deny access to a document of 1,000 pages because translation will take five months? The gentleman made his point earlier

Information & Ethics committee  If we look at the principles behind open data, we see that the idea is to get complete primary information as soon as possible. We understand that it is urgent to have access to this information, but, for documents like that, a delay in translation could hinder access, openness o

Information & Ethics committee  No, I did not say that it wasn’t necessary. Let’s use the example of information on detainees in Afghanistan. It’s safe to assume that there is a sense of urgency in accessing that information. A delay in translation could have major consequences. The translation of a document li

Information & Ethics committee  I don’t think I have the expertise to give you that information. I can give you my professional opinion on the Quebec context. Our language in Quebec is French. Some documents are obviously translated because of public safety and other considerations, but that does not apply to

Information & Ethics committee  The trap is in the pervasiveness of technology in accessing information. At the moment, as Mr. Caron said, information is no longer printed, it is diffuse and intangible. As a result, we tend to think that it is a technology issue. So then we deal with the people working in techn

Information & Ethics committee  The City of Montreal has made progress with public consultation. As I said earlier, there are various standing committees on public consultation. The last two I have heard talked about open data. But I would like to come back to the language problem. Quebec municipalities are p

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Diane Mercier and I am a practitioner, researcher and consultant in knowledge transfer. For over 20 years, I have been working as an information professional for the City of Montreal. I am currently in charge