Editorial: Rescind unworkable directives on language in health care

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For decades, if not more than a century, anglophones and other minority communities have contributed to providing health care to all Quebecers.

Jeffery Hale, in Quebec City, was established in 1867. The Royal Victoria Hospital, now part of the McGill University Health Centre, was created in 1893. The Chinese Hospital of Montreal was inaugurated in 1918, the Jewish General Hospital in 1934, and Santa Cabrini Hospital in 1960.

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In the modern era, these public institutions have provided health services in English, Mandarin, Yiddish, Italian and a multitude of other languages, where available — but also French, thanks to their bilingual status. In essence this has meant that patients have been able to seek care in their mother tongue, or the language in which they can communicate most comfortably, while no francophone who chose these facilities over other hospitals would be denied service in French.

But this proud history of inclusiveness and excellence has been put in jeopardy by new provisions of Bill 96 that quietly came into effect this summer. Directives were published in July outlining the exceptional circumstances under which health care “may” be offered “in a language other than French,” as care in English is now described in the reductionist bureaucratese of Quebec’s Ministry of Health and Social Services.

The “systemic” use of other languages is no longer permitted, despite an entire network of health institutions and facilities designated bilingual. As Santa Cabrini told staff in a memo coinciding with a visit by “francization advisers” from the Office québécois de la langue française: “The working language must be French at all times.” And anglophones could soon need their eligibility certificates for education in English to access health services exclusively in English — a document many, from the most vulnerable elderly to young children who aren’t yet enrolled in school, do not possess and may have difficulty obtaining.

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What happened to all the earlier promises from when Bill 96 was adopted?

In May 2022, Premier François Legault stated: “I want to be very clear: There is no change at all in the actual situation of services given to anglophones and immigrants in English in our health-care system.”

In May 2023, Minister of the French Language Jean-François Roberge vowed that no proof would be required for anglophone Quebecers to obtain public services in English.

“It will be self-identification,” Roberge told The Gazette. “In other words, a statement made in good faith. We are not doing cards or certificates or anything like that.”

And yet the Health Ministry regulations repeatedly reference eligibility certificates.

Despite being written in black and white in the new directives, Roberge took to X — and an open letter published in The Gazette — to deny anything has changed, creating consternation.

Roberge owes English-speaking Quebecers an immediate explanation as to why the new regulations contradict previous pledges.

Legault must also explain why his government is walking back what Parti Québécois premier Lucien Bouchard famously told English-speaking Quebecers: “When you go to the hospital and you’re in pain, you may need a blood test, but you certainly don’t need a language test.”

And all Quebecers deserve to know where Health Ministry bureaucrats found time to draft 31 pages of Orwellian regulations that are only sowing confusion in an already strained system.

The average wait time to see a specialist is 14 months, and a record number of doctors have quit the public system in the last year as emergency rooms continue to overflow. These problems should be the priority — not a language crackdown that burdens bilingual institutions, busy doctors, overworked nurses and sick patients with new restrictions.

The Legault government should shelve these harmful and unworkable directives, stat.

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