Backgrounder - Veterans Affairs Canada
Office of the Commissioner's Audit of Direct Health Care Services
The Office of the Commissioner conducted several telephone interviews with the person responsible for official languages and various managers at the head office of the Department of Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) located in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. An on-site audit was conducted at Sainte-Anne Hospital (SAH) located in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue on Montréal Island in Quebec. It is the only institution of the Department where there is significant demand for services pursuant to paragraph 6(1)(a) of the Official Languages (Communications with and Services to the Public) Regulations. We interviewed members of the Hospital’s management team, representatives of the Nursing Branch and the Human Resources Branch, as well as the institution’s ombudsman, and reviewed the policies and directives, organizational structure, professional service contracts, institutional transfer files and reports prepared by the Department. The procedures and systems in place at SAH were also reviewed.
FINDINGS
Strengths:
- Managers are well aware of the Department’s linguistic obligations.
- VAC complies with Treasury Board Directive C in identifying significant demand from its restricted and identifiable clientele.
Opportunities for improvement
- VAC needs to review the language requirements of positions that provide health care to hospital patients and evaluate the language skills of their incumbents.
- There is a lack of appropriate monitoring mechanisms to ensure compliance with linguistic obligations in relation to health care services by the staff and by health professionals hired on contract.
- In several reception areas of the SAH, there was no signage indicating the availability of services in both official languages.
In order to ensure that adequate health care is provided to VAC’s official language minority clientele in their language of choice, the Commissioner made seven recommendations:
- Recommendation: That VAC display signage for active offer in all reception areas of Sainte-Anne Hospital informing patients of the availability of services in both official languages.
- Recommendation: That VAC raise the linguistic profile for oral interaction for bilingual orderly positions and various bilingual nursing positions at Sainte-Anne Hospital.
- Recommendation: That VAC verify whether the incumbents of bilingual orderly positions and various bilingual nursing positions at Sainte-Anne Hospital, whose language requirements have been raised, meet these new requirements. In cases where the incumbents do not meet these new requirements, the Department must take measures to ensure equal health care in both official languages at all times.
- Recommendation: That VAC implement a monitoring mechanism to ensure compliance with its linguistic obligations in relation to the provision of health care services at Sainte-Anne Hospital.
- Recommendation: That VAC ensure health professionals hired on contract by Sainte-Anne Hospital have the required language skills.
- Recommendation: That VAC implement a monitoring mechanism to ensure the quality of services provided in both official languages by health professionals hired on contract at Sainte-Anne Hospital.
- Recommendation: That VAC review its 12 operating agreements with provincial health services and health institutions signed prior to 1993 to determine whether, when they are renewed, they should include a language clause in accordance with the obligations set out in section 25 of the Official Languages Act and paragraph 6(1)(a) of the Regulations.
