Official Languages committee  The question simply does not arise for English, because these concepts evolve in English. They are interpreted by the courts in English. I am talking about Canadian common law. In Canada, when there is a new term or a new concept, it is the courts that interpret it. The concept is interpreted and circumscribed, and it is found in context, in judicial decisions and in legislation.

Official Languages committee  That is a very good question. Thank you for asking it. The last point I want to make is that common law in French essentially arose from translation. The people who do this translation are also the ones who are constructing legal language in Canada. The legislation and case law are the product of translation.

Official Languages committee  I think the problem stems mainly from the fact that there is no systemic approach. That comes from the way it was decided to standardize the common law in French. The work is done bit by bit, carefully, slowly, and every year we have to wait in order to plan the work. The problem stems, first, from the way it is funded and the way it is structured.

Official Languages committee  That is right. There needs to be a systematic approach. We should at least know what the budget for the next five years will be, so we could determine the fields we are going to work on. We have to be able to plan, instead of reacting when we receive $500,000, for example. It is hard to plan what we are going to do with amounts like that.

Official Languages committee  No. The Centre de traduction et de terminologie juridiques is the pioneer for common law in French. We coordinate standardization activity across Canada. I stress the fact that this is for everyone, for all the provinces and the federal government. The federal co-drafters use this terminology in federal legislation.

Official Languages committee  The training that Mr. Rémillard is talking about is meant for justice professionals, but not judges, and certainly not for federally appointed judges. I had wondered about that question myself, because our organization was interested in providing training. The present roadmap would not fund training for federally appointed judges.

Official Languages committee  Self-assessment absolutely does not work. I think we have to move toward a model that is not based on self-assessment. The papers recently reported a case in New Brunswick where a judge appointed to the Provincial Court who said he was bilingual gave a decision when he was not capable of hearing the case in French.

Official Languages committee  Yes.

Official Languages committee  The phraseology tools for legal French apply both in Quebec and in a common law province. Only the technical vocabulary of the common law in French would change in Quebec.

Official Languages committee  I would like to add something. We are dependent on the roadmap for access to justice in both official languages. That is how our organization funds its standardization work. Our organization is not the only one working on standardization. There has to be a partnership with other jurilinguistic centres and the federal government's translation bureau.

Official Languages committee  No. Our centre works exclusively on translating the common law into French. We also work closely with the Paul-André Crépeau Centre for Private and Comparative Law at McGill University, which deals with the Quebec side of things.

Official Languages committee  In fact, we started doing standardization in the 1980s under the aegis of what was called POLAJ, an initiative of the Department of Justice. Since then, we have done standardization in several areas of the law: the law of evidence, contract and security law, the law of trusts, family law, property law, and estates law.

Official Languages committee  For example, we were contacted by a legislative drafter from New Brunswick. The goal of standardization is to ensure that everyone uses the same French vocabulary of common law throughout Canada. We cannot have a situation where New Brunswick uses certain terms, while Ontario and the federal government each do something else.

Official Languages committee  Mr. Chair, ladies and gentlemen, hello. I am director of the Centre de traduction et de terminologie juridiques of the Université de Moncton and I am also a member of the Réseau national de formation en justice. Since I only have a few minutes to talk to you about a rather specialized subject, I am going to dive right into the heart of the matter, the standardization of French common law vocabulary.