In March 2025, the Canadian Association of Professional Employees (CAPE), a Canadian public services union, published a press release denouncing a five-year plan from the Canadian government’s Translation Bureau to cut over 300 positions by attrition.

These job cuts are reportedly part of an effort by government agency Public Services Procurement Canada (PSPC) to ensure the Translation Bureau’s financial viability due to a decline in demand, in part related to the increasing use of AI translation.

CAPE argues these cuts will hinder francophone Canadians’ access to the same quality of information available to English speakers.

Since the decision, an open letter signed by nearly 70 Canadian academics has circulated demanding the cancellation of the plan to reduce the Translation Bureau’s staff.

Slator reached out to Chantal Gagnon, a professor in the Department of Linguistics and Translation at the Université de Montréal, for comment. She is listed as the first signature on the open letter.

Gagnon told Slator that “We, as translation experts, are concerned about the quality of federal government translations due to the departure of experienced staff without prompt replacement. All of this at a time when the industry is being shaken by rapid and profound transformations. Hence our letter.”

The five-paragraph letter, written in French, criticizes PSPC’s use of advancements in AI translation technology as a justification for these job cuts. The writers note that AI models tend to be trained using English-dominant data, which they say may result in French translations “colored by English.”

The letter also discusses concerns that AI translation tools are susceptible to hallucination, promoting stereotypes, and weaker performance in specialized domains. 

While the writers acknowledge the potential for these new tools to support translators, they also express concerns that the promise of increased efficiency from the use of AI will ultimately lead to worse working conditions for linguists and lower translation quality.

The open letter goes on to call for the formation of a secretariat of state (secrétariat d’Etat) for translation. The Translation Bureau currently falls under the jurisdiction of Public Services Procurement Canada (PSPC).

The writers reference a 2016 letter published in Le Devoir, which argued translation should not fall under the jurisdiction of PSPC, and that a general secretariat for translation (secrétariat général de la traduction) should be formed, and fall under the Department of Canadian Heritage.

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This call to reorganize the government’s translation services comes in addition to their demand for the government to reverse its decision to reduce the Translation Bureau’s staff, in order to “guarantee the rights of the country’s French speakers.”

Echoing their previous statement and showing their support for the open letter, CAPE published another press release on April 16, 2025, demanding the decision to cut jobs from the Translation Bureau be reversed and invoking the importance of French-English bilingualism to the Canadian national identity.

Interestingly, CAPE’s new press release includes demands that the Bureau be permanently funded, that its services become both free and mandatory for all federal departments, and that “the Translation Bureau be transferred under the purview of the Minister of Canadian Culture and Identity.”