Road to improvement

A Francophone man in Northern Ontario called 511 to get information on driving conditions and selected service in French. He could not understand the automated system’s French, so he chose English, which provided better service.

RESULT: Our Office raised the issue with the Ministry of Transportation, which acknowledged there were issues with the automated system and said they were planning on implementing a new system. The new system is now in place, with a procedure for quality verification. The Ministry also reviewed the entire library of pre-translated words used by the new system, approximately 21,000 entries in all, to ensure the right terms were used. Finally, the Ministry established a partnership process for all of its data providers to verify the quality of new data entered into the system.

Learn more about the French Language Services Unit which answers questions and takes complaints about services in French.