Quebec pledges new health-care language directive after anglo meeting: Roberge

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The Quebec government said Tuesday that it will issue a new directive on the use of languages other than French in the health-care system to make it clearer, after the province’s language minister met with several organizations serving anglophones.

Minister of the French Language Jean-François Roberge said the new wording of the directive is intended to assuage the concerns of people who feared they could be denied health-care in English, but that the existing directive will remain in force until the updated version is ready.

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“There were huge misunderstandings, we never did change our policy. Health care and social services are accessible for the English-speaking community, no questions asked, they don’t have to show any documents, any certificates at all,” Roberge said in an interview Tuesday.

Roberge said he met with a provincial committee on social services and healthcare; Seniors Action Quebec; 211 Montreal; the Cummings Centre, a community centre for adults over 50 in Montreal; as well as committees from Jeffery Hale — Saint Brigid’s, a Quebec City healthcare institution serving the English community, to discuss the directive that has raised fears in Quebec’s English community.

But several prominent anglophone organizations weren’t present at the meeting.

The Quebec Community Groups Network has said it wasn’t initially invited, and declined a last-minute invitation because the health minister wouldn’t be present. The Community Health and Social Services Network, a Quebec City-based organization that supports access to health and social services in English, said it was invited, but decided not to attend the meeting because it didn’t meet the expectations of community leadership.

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Roberge said that during the meeting he heard concerns that people wouldn’t be able to access English-language health care without some sort of document and that some elements of the directive appeared to differ from page to page.

He said he sought to reassure those organizations that access to English-language health care will be maintained.

Asked by The Gazette why the government would put out a document with 23 pages of rules and scenarios if it didn’t change anything, Roberge said the document was intended to protect the rights of anglophones.

Quebec’s language law reform, known as Bill 96, requires all government communications with citizens to be in French except with people who were communicating with the government in English before the bill was introduced in May 2021, and are grandfathered in, or those who have the right to English-language education in the province — referred to in the directive as “recognized anglophones.” Roberge said the document was intended to ensure those individuals have the ability to continue carrying out what he described as “administrative” communications in English.

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Asked for examples of those communications, Roberge said he’s not the minister for health and social services and didn’t want to give the wrong information, but that, for example, an access to information request, or information about a hospital’s administration would be considered “administrative communications.”

The QCGN called Tuesday for the directive to scrapped, or at least suspended until the new version is ready.

“Piecemeal changes to these directives are not enough,” Sylvia Martin-Laforge, the group’s director-general said in a statement. “At the very least, if the directives are to be edited, the current, unacceptable directives must be suspended immediately, this minute. The confusion they create, the complications they introduce into the administration of health care in Quebec are unnecessary and unconscionable.”

This story will be updated.

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