‘Health visits are stressful enough’: Ottawa ups pressure on Quebec over health care language directive

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The federal government is stepping up the pressure on Quebec to back down on controversial provisions in a new language directive that appear to place limits on accessing health care in English within the province.

Randy Boissonnault, Ottawa’s Minister of Official Languages, released a four-paragraph statement on Saturday evening insisting that “while we respect Quebec’s authority over health care and its efforts to protect the French language, this should not come at the expense of Quebecers’ right to receive timely care in either official language.”

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Boissonnault’s statement comes after he met briefly on Friday with Quebec French Language Minister Jean-François Roberge to discuss the 31-page directive issued by the province’s Health Ministry on July 18. It also follows the public stand earlier this week of three fellow Liberal MPs from Quebec — Anna Gainey, Anthony Housefather and Emmanuella Lambropoulos — denouncing the directive for undermining, in their view, the accessibility principle enshrined in the Canada Health Act.

“In my discussion with Minister Roberge, I stressed the importance of ensuring that English-speaking Quebecers have unimpeded access to health care,” Boissonnault posted on the social media platform X.

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Boissonnault described an open letter (published in The Gazette Friday) by Roberge, Health Minister Christian Dubé and Eric Girard, the minister responsible for relations with English-speaking Quebecers, as a “positive development.” In that letter, the three ministers said they were “open to clarifying the directive to make it clear that there will never be language requirements in Quebec to treat a patient.”

Later on Friday, Roberge went into more detail in a radio interview, saying he would be open to changing some of the wording in the directive to address the concerns of the anglophone community.

“If we have to do some clarification on the directive, we will do so,” Roberge told CJAD radio host Aaron Rand. “It’s too important to respect the rights of the anglophone community when we are talking about health care. If we have to change the wording, we’ll do so.”

However, some of Roberge’s remarks raised questions, especially when he insisted to Rand that the directive “is not about health care,” but rather “talks about administrative demands” like filing an access-to-information request to know “how many ambulances are going to the Jewish General Hospital.”

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In fact, the Health Ministry linguistic directive does not mention access-to-information requests at all, and the only reference in which the word “administrative” appears is in the context of the “administrative structure” of a health institution on its website and how this must be in French.

Still, Roberge sought to allay concerns about the most hotly-contested provision in the directive, which stipulates that historic anglophones who seek health care in English only must be “issued” an eligibility certificate from the Education Ministry — a document that is difficult to obtain for students and generally not available to adults.

Asked point blank by Rand “will you or won’t you?” on whether the government directive, as is currently written, will require of anglophones an eligibility certificate to receive services in English only, Roberge responded: “We won’t.”

Roberge added that he will be meeting anglophone community groups next week. But on Saturday, prominent anglo leaders told The Gazette that they had yet to be contacted by Roberge’s office. They also insisted that Dubé should attend the meeting as well, since the directive was issued by the Health Ministry.

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In his statement, Boissonnault went on to say that “understandably, members of the English-speaking community want further assurance of their ability to access health-care services in English.”

“Health visits are stressful enough,” he continued. “Let’s not add to that when we should be doing everything to make them more welcoming to patients. Our universal health care system is about how we take care of each other.”

Meanwhile, Gabriel Coulombe, a spokesperson for the provincial opposition Parti Québécois on economic matters, challenged Boissonnault’s statement on X, writing: “Should we conclude that the federal government will fight so that French-speaking minorities in the rest of Canada can also receive health care in their mother tongue? Double standards. Two languages, two approaches.”

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