Hon. Sabi Marwah: Thank you, senator, for that question. There are several dimensions to the problem. I think you’ve mentioned the first one, and the biggest bottleneck by far: the availability of translation services.

I would remind the senator that translation services are under the purview of the Translation Bureau and not under the purview of the Internal Economy Committee. We’ve had many discussions with them, and I’m told they are hiring all available staff but there is an acute shortage everywhere. They’re making every attempt to hire any available capacity they can find.

Another compounding problem is that the hybrid sittings we have authorized are much more difficult to manage for translators than in-person sittings. Hence that has constrained the availability on the supply side, because we’ve reduced the service levels to which translators can operate. They normally work six hours, and now they can only do four hours because of additional demands. That’s the supply side.

There are a couple of dimensions to this, senator. One is that we keep extending hybrid sittings one and two months at a time. Hence that’s not very conducive to long-range planning on our part, and we don’t want to invest in resources when we don’t know how long the hybrid setting is going to last. That has been a constraint.

Our third and fourth constraints are that senators agreed to prioritize government business, and that leaves less time for everybody else.

The last point is that there are more groups in the Senate. There used to be only two groups. Now there are four, and each one wants translation services. When you add that up, it constrains the availability of translation.