Spears: How official languages absurdity shuts down information at the NCC
Unable to translate tens of thousands of pages into both languages when the original documents and records were only in one, the NCC had to take down the whole section of its website that offered these records to the public.
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So, what is it that so urgently needs translation? The NCC handles more than 100 access requests a year, often numbering hundreds of pages apiece. Here's an example. I asked about fixing the roof of the official residence at Harrington Lake and got back 256 pages with a lot like this one:
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'Any membrane placed on the existing wood plank sheathing or on any material directly attached to the existing wood plank sheathing shall feature vapour permeability properties to allow for any moisture within the existing roof assembly to be released to the exterior.'
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There follows some discussion of roof membrane options (FT synthetics, hydra breathable; or Titanium PSU self-adhered underlayment, high temp).
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Also insulation: BP Esgard resistance roof insulator, an inch thick in a rigid wood fibre panel, or Gutex Multitherm 40 mm wood fibre board.
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Do we really need that sort of thing translated? And remember, this is a document that I alone asked for, so it's not clear who the translation job would be serving. (On the plus side, I could learn a lot of French vocabulary about roofing.)
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Of course NCC documents come in many forms. Some look like this expense spreadsheet for Rideau Cottage: 'STY pest control as per quote dated March 11, 2022 240.00.'
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There are also vast numbers of emails in which employee A asks employee B whether her team is free to meet on Thursday.
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The public service is an email-generating machine, pages and pages, mostly informal notes in one language only.
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The new ruling is that the Canadian public needs all this — including the dross — in both official languages if it's going to be made available on a website. Failing that, public access must be shut down. Which it now has been.
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Wrong approach.
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My house is 100 years old. No level floors or square angles are left, and it will never be perfect. But I don't tear it down and pretend this is an improvement. You don't destroy something for being imperfect — except that the government of Canada has now done so.
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This means the public can't see useful federal documents because no one has translated into both languages 'Gutex Multitherm 40 mm' or 'Titanium PSU self-adhered underlayment.' For a one-time, non-controversial roof repair.
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In my view, this position differs from the PACBI guidelines, which state: "As a general overriding rule, Israeli cultural institutions, unless proven otherwise, are complicit in maintaining the Israeli occupation and denial of basic Palestinian rights, whether through their silence or actual involvement in justifying, whitewashing or otherwise deliberately diverting attention from Israel's violations of international law and human rights." Makor should be exempted since it regularly funds films that draw attention to Israel's violations of Palestinian human rights. In 2024 alone, the list includes The Governor , The Village League and Death in Um al hiran . RIDM's website does not disclose support for a boycott. In the end, RIDM announced that Elon withdrew her film. She stated: "Screening my film at RIDM does not serve the long-term purpose of the festival, nor is it possible now to address the nuances in our common fight for justice for Palestine. I am deeply saddened and distressed by [what] has brought it to this point." To date, the film has not found a cinema in Montreal willing to screen it. The two festivals' mission statements promise high-quality films that transform or renew audiences' relationships to the world. It is clear why programmers chose both films, since they're cinematically innovative and provoke important conversations. However, both festivals silenced these films and signalled to other filmmakers that these festivals are not brave spaces to have difficult and necessary conversations.
