Translation Bureau to cut a quarter of its workforce over next 5 years

A federal public service union is condemning a move by Canada's Translation Bureau to cut its workforce by one-quarter over the next five years.

The Canadian Association of Professional Employees (CAPE), which represents staff translators on Parliament Hill, released a statement Thursday morning condemning the bureau's business plan for 2025 to 2030. According to CAPE, the bureau plans to cut 339 positions over that period through attrition. 

The Translation Bureau provides translation services for all Canadian government agencies, boards, commissions and departments, and is under the jurisdiction of Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC).

CAPE president Nathan Prier told CBC that the bureau's work is important for upholding bilingualism, and said reducing its workforce undermines the right of francophone Canadians to access reliable information.

Prier said the reduction will place a strain on remaining translators, and called for PSPC to cancel the plan.

"That's going to force translators to work faster with fewer resources, and it's going to mean that there's an unacceptable decline in quality," he said.

PSPC spokesperson Michèle LaRose said the reduction is a response to a projected decrease in demand for the Translation Bureau's services. A 2024 Linkedin post by PSPC listed the bureau's workforce at roughly 1,350 employees.

The Bloc Québécois also condemned the move to reduce the Translation Bureau's workforce.

"In less than a week, the Liberals have eliminated the Department of Official Languages and are now cutting funding to the Translation Bureau," the party said in a statement. "These are two direct affronts to Quebecers and francophones in Canada."

Focus on AI

The office of Ali Ehsassi, the minister of government transformation, public services and procurement, said in a French-language statement that the Translation Bureau "plays an essential role in the smooth running of our government and in promoting our two official languages in Canada."

The statement also notes the decline in demand for translation services and the advance of technology.

Prier rejected those explanations, calling the staff reduction "austerity for austerity's sake." He also criticized the quality of AI-generated translation.

"AI is amazing, it does great work and it should be there to support human translators, but it's not ready to replace a single human translator, and especially when you go to longer-form documents," he said.

In its 2024 fall economic statement, which explains how last fiscal year's deficit ballooned to $61.9 billion, the federal government highlighted its use of artificial intelligence to boost productivity within the public service.

According to the fall economic statement, the Translation Bureau holds an extensive repository of bilingual texts that are invaluable for training artificial intelligence models to understand and generate accurate translations.

"Large language AI models and machine translation will fundamentally change the way we work, but Canadians need language AI that relies on, and generates, Canadian content," it said.