Author: The Equity
Published September 25, 2024

Sophie Kuijper Dickson, LJI Journalist

Outaouais’s health and social service provider, the Centre intégré de santé et des services sociaux de l’Outaouais (CISSSO), has launched a new initiative aimed at helping anglophones navigate hospitals and CLSCs that don’t have the official bilingual designation from the province’s Ministry of Health.

The new program, launched this month, is making yellow name tag holders available to staff who work in the region’s healthcare facilities – be they nurses, cooks, doctors or janitors – who wish to identify themselves as bilingual.

The idea, according to Joanne Dubois, CISSSO’s coordinator for accessing English services across the network, is to reduce anxiety for anglophones who need to travel to Hull or Gatineau for specialized services.

“If you’re an English family and you’re going to the city, look for an English card and they’ll help you,” Dubois said.

“My job is to ensure the person that speaks English anywhere in the Outaouais gets the service. And by doing this, it [makes it clear] that we’re allowed to get our services in our language.”

Dubois said she first got the idea for this yellow card system from her colleagues working in the Côte-Nord region of Quebec, and figures since she launched the program on Sept. 6, at least 550 people have begun using the card system. The first, she noted with pride, was CISSSO’s president and CEO Marc Bilodeau.

Not needed in ‘designated’ bilingual hospitals, CLSCs

Dubois said the yellow card identifiers won’t be needed in hospitals and CLSCs that are considered “designated” bilingual institutions by the health ministry, which include the Pontiac Hospital, the Quyon, Chapeau, Mansfield, Otter Lake, Rapides des Joachims, and Shawville CLSCs, and the Shawville long-term care home.

Healthcare providers in these institutions, according to the ministry’s website, are required “to make all their health and social services accessible in the English language to English-speaking persons.”

According to Dubois, this means staff in these facilities can communicate with each other in English, health files can be in English, and all signage and written communications on social media must be in both English and French.

Dubois noted, though, that the bilingual designation has no impact on a patient’s ability to communicate with their healthcare provider in English – that English speaking patients in the province will be able to speak with their providers in English, no matter what kind of hospital they’re in.

“There’s no language when it comes to your health,” she said, noting this applies for anglophones traveling to Gatineau and Hull for specialized services.

CAQ English-access healthcare directive clarified following criticism

Pontiac MNA André Fortin said he believes a piece of legislation tabled by the CAQ government in July, which on Monday was clarified by another directive, caused significant confusion around this fundamental healthcare maxim articulated by Dubois.

According to reporting from the Montreal Gazette, a 31-page Bill 96 directive produced in July stated only “recognized anglophones”, defined as people who had an English-language education certificate, or people who had communicated solely in English prior to May 2021, would be entitled to continue communicating in English with health and social service networks.

“Our main worry at this point in time was to ensure that the interpretation of the directives flowing from Bill 96 did not give the impression to any healthcare worker across the province that they could no longer serve english-speaking Quebecers in English,” Fortin told THE EQUITY.

Earlier this month, he tabled a motion in the Nationally Assembly ensuring no English-language education certificate would be needed for anglophone Quebecers to access health care in their mother tongue. The motion was unanimously adopted.

“We wanted to make sure that everybody was on the same page here: that patients knew they had a right to services in English, and that those providing the services didn’t interpret [the directives] the wrong way,” Fortin said.

“Because that’s the real risk here, is that some healthcare providers will interpret it to say that they can’t provide services in English or that they would have to verify one’s eligibility.”

Fortin said the CAQ government also agreed to send the motion to all healthcare establishments across Quebec so that “it was immediately said to healthcare workers that, ‘No, you can and you should treat people in the language of their choice’.”

Now, this may not be needed. On Monday of this week (Sept. 23), the government released a new directive which clarified that “no validation of the user’s identity is required to access these services in English,” according to reporting from CBC Montreal.

two-page English summary of the new directive states that “health and social services may be offered in a language other than French, upon request, when the health of any person so requires.”

The full 10-page directive is available only in French.

In an email written in French to THE EQUITY, Quebec’s Ministry of Health said the Bill 96 directive would never have affected designated bilingual institutions, and was put in place in July to to “equip establishments in the health and social services network to apply the new provisions of the Charter of the French Language in force since 1 June 2023, which stipulate that the public administration must use French exclusively in its written and oral communications, except in certain exceptional situations.”

Update: Sept. 24, 2024 This article, as published in the newspaper on Sept. 25, reported the province had yet to change its original 31-page directive put forward in July. THE EQUITY learned, after the newspaper was sent to print, that on Monday the Ministry of Health did indeed release an updated directive. This online article has been edited to reflect this development.

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