Roundup: A choice to keep injuring interpreters

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We’re in day one-hundred-and-fifty-five of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, and Russia has captured the country’s second-largest power plant, as they are redeploying their forces to three southern regions in advance of an expected Ukrainian counter-offensive in the area. Ukrainian forces have used American-supplied rockets to take out a strategic bridge being used by Russians to supply their forces occupying the Kherson region, which Ukraine has stated they intend to re-take. It’s these weapons that have allowed Ukrainian forces to turn the corner on their counter-offensive, and they have pointed out that the sooner they can get more of them, the sooner they will be able to end this war. Meanwhile, ship owners are assessing whether the risk is worth it to travel through mined sea corridors to ship grain out of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports (and it could take weeks or months to clear the mines from these ports).

Closer to home, translators in Parliament are continuing to sound the alarm about the plan to hire unaccredited and off-site interpreters to do parliamentary work, no matter that this could impair the quality of the translations. This is very important, because it’s Parliament. To make this worse, the Government House Leader, Mark Holland, is downplaying the effect that hybrid sittings have had in injuring the existing interpreters, claiming that this is because they were already facing shortfalls before COVID because of the “expanded work” of Parliament. The problem with this statement is that they simply made the situation worse with hybrid sittings and the fact that it injures the interpreters, and they keep making excuses to keep them going. This is not helping with the shortfall in interpreters, it’s actively making it worse, and they don’t care. And while the Conservatives are opposing this move, they have not helped their case by insisting on resisting COVID measures including masking. And while I had a Liberal staffer chirping at me on Twitter about this, the fact is that MPs have been aware of the problems for over two years now, and have chosen to do nothing about it. They chose to keep hybrid sittings going, knowing full well that it injures the interpreters and can lead to permanent hearing loss. Their refusal to take measures is a choice, and a deeply unethical one. There is no defending it.

Good reads:

  • The Pope is in Quebec City for the second leg of his “penitence” tour, and had more meetings with Justin Trudeau and Mary Simon at the Citadel.
  • Mark Miller says the “gaps” in the Pope’s quasi-apology can’t be ignored, in particular the points about renouncing the Doctrine of Discovery.
  • While the Public Health Agency is recommending gay and bi men reduce sexual contacts to stop the spread of monkeypox, advocates want more supports.
  • David Lametti announced planned new consultations around criminal responses to HIV non-disclosure, which has been loudly criticized to date.
  • There are questions about what the Cabinet committee on service delivery delays is doing, as they have not been consulting with front-line workers or unions.
  • The UK is assigning a military expert to its high commission in Ottawa to further cooperation around the threat that Russia and China poses to the Arctic.
  • Hockey Canada executives told the Heritage committee that they have paid out $7.6 million in out-of-court settlements since 1989, and the CEO refuses to resign for it.
  • Leslyn Lewis is threatening that if the leadership debate won’t let her talk about her particular conspiracy theories that she won’t attend. No, seriously.

Odds and ends:

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