All it took was an administrative directive reiterating the broad outlines of the Act respecting the official and common language of Quebec, French (Bill 96) to relaunch this false but incessant debate on access for English-speakers or allophones in Quebec to health care in a language other than that.
It does not matter that this right remains unchanged, imminent “restrictions” have nevertheless been brandished by opponents of the reform of the Charter of the French Language, although they are in no way anchored in reality. The opportunity was too good to miss to be tendentiously indignant.
By broadly denouncing the directive issued in July by the Quebec Ministry of Health and Social Services to specify to the network the circumstances in which care may be offered in a language other than the common language, the media and the English-speaking community have ignored the very first exemption provided for therein.
The 31-page document nevertheless stipulates, on the second page, that an organization may deviate from Law 96 as soon as “health, public safety or the principles of justice require it.” It is even explained that this includes “any emergency situation or physical, mental, psychosocial and population circumstance.” And that this derogation applies “to all care and services offered.”
A framework that governs both written and oral communications, again when required by health, understanding of the care provided or the granting of free and informed consent. As long as the first exchanges were attempted in French, before establishing that the patient or his companion do not understand Tremblay’s language.
The ministerial directive cites a few scenarios, but emphasizes that caregivers can refer to them “without however limiting themselves to them.”
Yet it is precisely to these selected examples and to the subsequent, more stringent exemptions, provided for administrative services and not for care, that the early detractors of Bill 96 have attached themselves, going so far as to accuse the Quebec government of endangering the lives of non-French-speaking patients.
This law granting a series of exemptions, its application necessarily proceeds by subtractions. Which are not mutually exclusive, which its detractors prefer to ignore. A confusion perhaps born of a translation error. Or perhaps of bad faith. The directive recalls after all, in black and white, that “organizations [du réseau] have a legal obligation to serve the entire population of their territory.” The Health and Social Services Act also guarantees the right of every English-speaking person to receive care in English.
No one would advocate deviating from this basic humanity; no health professional would consent to it anyway.
Which makes the bluff displayed by the federal Liberals all the more astonishing. A handful of Montreal MPs could not help but once again rush to the phantasmagorical rescue of their English-speaking or allophone constituents. First and foremost, Marc Garneau’s successor, the elected representative for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce–Westmount, Anna Gainey, who brought the matter to her ministerial colleagues. Who blindly responded.
First and foremost, none other than the Minister of Official Languages, Randy Boissonnault, who prided himself on having stressed to his Quebec counterpart and head of Canadian Relations, Jean-François Roberge, “the importance of ensuring that English-speaking Quebecers have unhindered access to health care.”
However, Minister Boissonnault did not show the same emotion for the francophone minority outside Quebec, which, for its part, really struggles to get care in the other, supposedly official language. Even the recent findings of the official languages commissioners of Ontario and New Brunswick, where the lack of access to health care in French accounted for 9% and 6% of complaints recorded, respectively, did not shake him. In the Atlantic province — officially bilingual, let us remember — this right of francophones is not only violated in hospitals or in virtual medicine, but even when they request a document in their own language justifying forced hospitalization for mental health reasons, reported the commissioner’s latest annual report. In Ottawa, not a word was said about it.
The discordance between the federal defense of one or the other linguistic minority is striking, to say the least. And although Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has finally acknowledged the decline of French in Quebec, it is clear that some members of his team still do not agree. On the contrary, it is the inequality of the two official languages that his minister responsible, Randy Boissonnault, seems to favor.