Liberals quietly change French name of housing program

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Ottawa – Just refer to some of the Québécois leaders outside the world and some harsh words for adjustments.

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Federal liberals on Monday cautiously changed the French version of the proposed housing entity, aiming to speed up the construction of affordable housing that has been ridiculed on social media, to a name that appears to be created with Google Translate.

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Liberal leader Mark Carney spoke in Vaughan, Ontario, announcing the creation of a brand new entity to build Canadian houses, which he described as a “lean, mission-driven organization” that will act as a developer to build low-cost housing on a scale.

He then repeated the announcement in French, calling the entity “Canadian bâtir Maisons.” The same name was used in the official free press release that morning.

Quebec’s influential conservative political columnist Mathieu Bock-Cote uses AI-generated ET images to release a new robot on X, formerly known as Twitter.

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“Bâtir Maisons in Canada” is as incorrect as the infamous phrase “et Phone Home” from Steven Spielberg’s 1982 film.

Others have had poor quality of French translations and have taken the opportunity to give some political points to federal liberals.

PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon said he was surprised to see people not seeing their “signs of contempt for Quebec”, while Vincent Desmarais, a Quebec consultant to conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, called the liberal leader “Google Translate Carney.”

Even former freelance assistant, Jeremy Ghio tweeted that the French name apparently skipped some editing phases.

A few hours later, the name has been changed to “Maisons, Canada.”

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This is not the first time that liberals have been criticized for their poor French translation.

In 2019, the party used Strumbellas’s “One Hand” as their official campaign song and had the band interpret it in French. However, the poor quality of the translation and the inability of people to understand the lyrics caused the party to stop using the song.

State Post
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