This study will attempt to shed new light on the contribution of journalists to the issue of bilingualism. More specifically, the article will focus on the translation policy in Canadian print media. In some respects, journalists restructure the relationship between the public and the government in uncovering some of the mechanisms that govern the process of government communication. This shows in particular that the phenomena of bilingualism and institutional translation are not necessarily hidden from the community, since major newspapers pay attention to them in crisis situation. The research uses a corpus of articles written between 1942 and 1995, each article discussing issues about a translated political speech. It has been found that in one way or another, the translation of political speeches has been commented upon in the print media in Quebec and Canada. The following daily newspapers were used in the study: La Presse, Le Devoir, The Gazette and The Globe and Mail. It would appear that journalists in Quebec and Canada are aware of the differences between the language versions of their leaders’ speeches. Three roles are identified for journalists dealing with translation: the journalist-witness of the translation phenomenon, the journalist-commentator of the translation and the journalist-translator of political discourse.