Overview
- The government launched GCtranslate on Sept. 29 as the first flagship project of its AI strategy, piloting it in PSPC, the Privy Council Office, Finance, Canadian Heritage, FINTRAC and the RCMP.
- Official Languages Commissioner Raymond Théberge said the tool cannot meet legal bilingual obligations and warned it could skew toward English.
- Union representatives caution that AI translations lose cultural nuance, with francophone audiences most exposed because most federal work flows from English to French.
- The Translation Bureau was directed to reduce its workforce by about 25 percent over five years, or roughly 339 positions through attrition, raising concerns about knowledge erosion.
- PSPC cited 60 million words translated by an earlier version in three months, a figure not confirmed before publication, while the union says fewer than 200,000 words were human‑reviewed and budget and cost‑recovery pressures could push departments to rely on AI.