Doctors concerned about care in English
Some doctors are concerned about their freedom to provide care in English under the terms of Bill 96, which says only people who attended English school in Canada will be allowed to receive health-care services in English.
It’s an interesting point. I went to school in English in Montreal, but I never kept any report cards or anything. How do you prove a thing like that?
Update: CBC reports on an open letter from a group of social workers and others concerned with refugees and immigrants, asking for essential social services to be exempt from Bill 96. This report says “Simon Jolin-Barrette has insisted Bill 96 will not touch Quebec’s health and social services law.”
JP 22:51 on 2021-11-18 Permalink
Worried about my parents. They didn’t attend English school in Canada, but don’t speak French at a level to communicate about their health. Up until now, it’s never been an issue…does this eventually become a human rights issue…? Ugh…
I hope healthcare professionals are willing to break these rules.
Derek 05:45 on 2021-11-19 Permalink
Kate – You could contact your former school board to get an official letter showing how much English education you received. The EMSB has instructions for various scenarios here:
https://www.emsb.qc.ca/emsb/admissions/eligibility/standard-criteria
It would be odd to have to bring proof of eligibility to go to English school to a freaking doctors appointment but I suppose if they can make QR codes for Covid vaccine proofs then similar codes could eventually be embedded on one’s Medicare card.
dhomas 06:56 on 2021-11-19 Permalink
To be fair, when I speak to my colleagues who don’t live in Quebec, they find it super weird that I needed to prove my kids were eligible to be educated in English. “You mean, there are English and French schools, but most people aren’t allowed to choose which school to send their kids to?” is a common reaction. It’s only normal to us because we’ve gotten used to it.
On the topic of doctors, I find it very hard to believe a doctor who speaks English will refuse to speak to a patient who addresses them in English. Anything in writing may have to be sent in French as it needs to follow Quebec regulations, but how are they going to prove a doctor spoke English to their patient? At some point, it begins to violate the doctor’s Hippocratic oath: “I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug.” Not only are the warmth, sympathy, and understanding gone if you tell a patient “en français, svp!”, but doctors will have a hard time understanding symptoms and thus administering appropriate treatments if patients can’t communicate with them effectively.
ant6n 09:33 on 2021-11-19 Permalink
Being barred from public services (schooling) based on your ethnic background is already a human rights issue. But There are a couple of blind spots in Canada when it comes to democracy in this country, I’ve found it very difficult to get Canadians to see them (others: more language laws, the electoral system, the colonial head of state, …)
Kate 10:42 on 2021-11-19 Permalink
Derek, the school commissions in which I went to school no longer exist. The old confessional system was broken up in the 1990s.
dhomas, I’ve been assigned a GP who only speaks French (and whom I’ve never even met, but have spoken to on the phone). For my minimal medical needs I used to go to a clinic at St Mary’s where I could speak English, but my official doctor was assigned based on where I live, in Villeray, and now I have to go to his clinic instead. With this official doctor, if I ever need any tests or services I imagine I’ll now be shunted into the CHUM side of things, where I will not be allowed English services at all, regardless of where I went to grade school.
ant6n, there are reasons for all the things you mention. Most notably, Canada has to allow Quebec to break parts of the Canadian constitution at will, to keep it happy.
(Much later update from a sense of fairness: my GP speaks English with me in person, quite happily. He is a good dude and I hope he isn’t tempted away to the private side.)
DeWolf 10:45 on 2021-11-19 Permalink
I think Bill 96 is absolute trash, so I’m not defending it, but I just want to point out a couple of inaccuracies in this thread since they come up a lot in discussions around language policies.
First, the school situation in Quebec mirrors that of other provinces. If you’re an anglophone or immigrant in Ontario or Alberta (for instance), you can’t send your kid to a French school (and I mean I real French school, not French immersion, which is just English school playing dress up). Only kids with francophone parents can attend.
Second, language is not ethnicity, which is why the current, amended version of Bill 101 is compatible with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and doesn’t need the notwithstanding clause to be implemented. You can’t change your ethnicity but you can certainly change the language you speak.
Again, I’m not defending Bill 96, just pointing out that the ROC has similar limits on the French language that nobody really talks about.
Kate 10:52 on 2021-11-19 Permalink
DeWolf, I actually did not know that – that French schools are barred in that way. Was it done to force kids to assimilate to English, or as a sort of “fuck you” to Quebec?
DeWolf 10:58 on 2021-11-19 Permalink
I’m not sure about the history, actually. Generally these schools exist to serve francophone minority communities so it may simply never have been a question that any anglophones or allophones would want to send their children there.
Alberta’s language policies are outlined here. It’s actually technically possible for an anglophone kid to be admitted to a French-language school as long as they have a “parent with Francophone roots wants to introduce their child to the French language and Francophone identity and culture.” No idea how you’d prove “francophone roots” other than showing proof of what appears to be a French family name.
https://www.alberta.ca/french-language-education-in-alberta.aspx
Chris 11:04 on 2021-11-19 Permalink
Another analogous situation I keep an eye on is the lack of English on many store signs in Richmond BC, here’s a recent story:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/richmond-signs-chinese-english-1.4150456
Blork 11:24 on 2021-11-19 Permalink
Imagine the furor if a francophone went to a FRENCH-SPEAKING doctor in Nova Scotia or Alberta and the doctor told them “sorry, you have to speak English because I’m not allowed to serve you in French.”
Kate 11:30 on 2021-11-19 Permalink
DeWolf, it’s so bizarre that the idea of sending your kid to school to learn another language as a net benefit is simply not considered as a possibility.
One of my friends from high school was notably bright – he eventually became a Rhodes Scholar – and when he was in grade school they weren’t sure what to do with him so they suggested switching him to French school for a couple of years to give him more of a challenge. They did, and he chanced on a teacher who traumatized him, James Joyce style, with horrific accounts of what hell would be like if they sinned.
But he did learn French.
I was only threatened with French school as a possible punishment. “Keep doing that and we’ll send you to French school!”
It was effective. My French is still not terrific.
Josh 12:09 on 2021-11-19 Permalink
We had a lengthy court case in the Yukon that touched on this very question – can non-franco parents send their kids to francophone schools. It went to the Supreme Court and I transcribed a lot of the proceedings that took place here in Whitehorse.
Kate, the rationale for not allowing kids from non-francophone families into these schools is that basically you would reach a tipping point eventually where a school ostensibly for kids who’ve grown up speaking the language (“French first-language schools” they referred to through the proceedings) would become indistinguishable from French immersion schools. The parents who send their kids to the first-language schools do so because the expectation is that their children will mingle with other francophones, speak the language at recess, etc. Also the actual instruction within the classes, I would imagine, differs considerably between the two systems. (You would teach a 6 year old who speaks French at home much, much differently than a 6 year old who intends to learn the language at school.)
There’s also a bit of a cultural element; many of these parents want their kids mixing and mingling with other kids whose parents also watch Radio-Canada or RDS at home in order to preserve the culture (and in order to plant the seeds of a distinctly franco-yukonnaise culture).
It was a pretty interesting (and long, drawn-out) court battle here. Basically the question hinged on whether the local French school board was admitting kids it should not have been in order to inflate numbers to justify a new, larger school. In the end, they got their school.
Josh 12:11 on 2021-11-19 Permalink
(I should add that at the time, some First Nations people in the territory were none too happy that the francophone community here was getting its own school board and fancy new school, while their kids are just expected to attend regular, English-language schools that only vaguely motion in the direction of some of the truly threatened First Nations languages here.)
mare 12:55 on 2021-11-19 Permalink
This is a ridiculous and dangerous part of this shitty law.
What with (recent) immigrants, or the influx of anglophones from the RoC? My French is pretty good, and I mostly speak French with my francophone doctors, but sometimes there is some language-based confusing of medical terms and we switch temporarily to a mix of English and French. If that’s not allowed, or when my French was poorer so I wouldn’t understand much, that would be dangerous. Even native speakers have problems recalling advice and follow up regimen after seeing a doctor. People whose French is (still) poor will fare far worse. Doctors everywhere in the world use the language that works best when seeing patients, and often that’s English as a common language, but they also use an interpreter when needed. Does Quebec provide and pay for translation services? No, because interpreters are expensive and in short supply.
(And let’s not talk about mental health care: speaking French with your therapist when your French is poor? That won’t be a very successful therapy, just by the increased stress it causes alone.)
Derek 13:20 on 2021-11-19 Permalink
Kate – I don’t know what the confessional system was but I graduated from the Catholic school board in the 90s. You can contact the CSSM (née CSDM) to get your records if you went there. The PSBGM is administered by the EMSB now. Regardless, if you went to school here, someone has your records.
Kate 09:55 on 2021-11-20 Permalink
Derek: Confessional just means religiously-based boards. The main boards in Montreal used to be the Montreal Catholic School Commission and the PSBGM, as you say. I was sent to Catholic schools but in English.
jeather 13:36 on 2021-11-19 Permalink
If you were in the student ID era, the government has your records too. (Confessional system was PSBGM/CSDM.)
I don’t mind doing minor discussions in French with my health care providers — the nurse and doctor when I got my Covid test didn’t speak English well enough, and it was fine, and I’m pretty sure my vaccination nurses all spoke only French to me, but if we’re doing more than that, I don’t feel comfortable enough in French. I’m near the MUHC so when I went to the ER there I had no problem in English, at least. Don’t have a GP still, 2 years on; not sure if I’ll be assigned one who speaks English, assuming I ever get anyone.
Meezly 14:43 on 2021-11-19 Permalink
Some of you may be interested in signing an open letter to Legault against the plan to limit government services to citizens who are eligible to attend English schools:
https://qcgn.ca/open-letter-legault/
jeather 15:03 on 2021-11-19 Permalink
I was also sent this link
https://www.assnat.qc.ca/en/exprimez-votre-opinion/petition/Petition-9347/index.html
ant6n 15:50 on 2021-11-19 Permalink
@DeWolf
Ethicity is the correct term. Access to certain schools is based on ethnicity, not spoken language. A francophone can not learn English to gain access to an English school – what matters is how they were born and which ethnicity their parents are.
And if the ROC has the same rules, then shame on them – two wrongs don’t make a right.
Daisy 17:11 on 2021-11-19 Permalink
It’s not ethnicity, because anglophones are not necessarily of English/anglo descent (including me). Some of them are even of French descent. We have any and all ethnicities you can imagine.
In the ROC town I grew up in the francophone school was populated mainly by the children of members of the Armed Forces (there was a base in town). I believe it was quite a problem that not all of them were actually francophones, i.e. didn’t speak French at home. When they started school, some kids spoke perfect French and some not a word. How do you teach a class like that? But they all had a right to be there because of one parent having been educated in French, whereas an anglo kid who had already learned French was not allowed to be there.
JaneyB 17:48 on 2021-11-19 Permalink
Further to the education issue: In the French part of Winnipeg, indeed there are separate schools for immersion and others for ‘mother tongue Francos’. This was created by Franco-Manitobans to make sure the level of French instruction was high enough for kids who grow up in mother-tongue Franco families – there are plenty of these folks. Not sure but my guess is that kids from francophone Africa are welcome there – they do exist in Wpg, brought in to fill up the demographic gap from the low birth rate of the local Francos.
ant6n 22:41 on 2021-11-19 Permalink
@Daisy
I would argue that “anglophones” vs “francophones” at least in the context how lineage and heritage are used in Quebec to discriminate people into different availabilities of public service, are indeed ethnic divisions. It might feel odd because we are talking about a division line that latgely divides different white peoples of European descent, but this interpretation is consistent with the definition of the term ethnicity. Here the focus is on ancestry and language.
Wiki: “An ethnic group or ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups such as a common set of traditions, ancestry, language, history, society, culture, nation, religion, or social treatment within their residing area.”
jeather 00:04 on 2021-11-20 Permalink
The issue with calling it ethnicity is that there is no self-identification — there are lots of people who identify as anglos in Quebec (and who other anglophones would agree are anglo, as the community aspect does matter) who cannot go to English schools.
ant6n 06:02 on 2021-11-20 Permalink
@jeather
When the state has policies that divide the people along ethnic lines in order to apply different policies, it didn’t care about how you self-identify. Otherwise the discrimination is moot.
Meezly 11:40 on 2021-11-20 Permalink
This has been an interesting discussion, and at risk of digressing a bit, as quality of education was mentioned between French immersion vs French first schooling, as my Vancouver friend went through this as an Anglo sharing child custody with her ex-francophone partner.
Their kid was struggling with reading and writing at his French First school, even though he could speak French well, but the teachers were not good at figuring out how to help him. The school never tried to accommodate my friend by speaking to her in English. They’d tell her that her son’s “doing fine”. And it was hard for her kid to make friends as all the kids came from different areas as this was the only French school in Vancouver. It was not a good fit for her kid, but her ex insisted that the kid keep going to this school because he’s francophone.
When my friend moved to a different area, she finally convinced her ex to enrol their kid in the neighbourhood school’s French immersion program. It was much less strict, more relaxed and the kid was able to make friends in the hood. However, she realized he was academically behind for his grade level. The kid felt “stupid” because in Grade 4, all the kids knew how to multiply except for him.
He never learned multiplication in Grade 3 at his French First school because it was all about dictées, dictées, dictées.
Anyway, with a good tutor to help him catch up, the kid has been adjusting and thriving. I don’t know what I’m trying to say with this except to share my friend’s experience with both educational systems. If this particular French school was actually any good, my friend’s kid would’ve benefitted from that. But the running theme is that there is a blindness and obsession that the French language must be prioritized at all cost so much so that it becomes more damaging than nurturing.
Kate 16:43 on 2021-11-20 Permalink
Meezly, I’ve wondered about some of the things you mention here. Putting kids who’ve never spoken French into a French school cold seems to be a sink-or-swim situation. I have wondered what happens to kids who have even a minor problem with language learning when faced with this.
Also, I remember some of the French teachers from high school – to them, not to know French perfectly was seen more as a moral failing than as the natural result of growing up in a family that didn’t speak French at home. The obsession with the language that you describe here is not new.