EXAMINATION OF THE INSTITUTIONS - CORRECTIONAL SERVICE CANADA
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CSC managers who have a duty to provide bilingual health care are well aware of their linguistic obligations. The CSC has policies and an administrative directive concerning official languages. It is possible to identify offenders' preferred language using the Offender Management System database, which receives its information from the admissions departments.
However, we identified some shortcomings in the process of identifying the clientele's preferred language. In addition, there are no effective monitoring mechanisms for ensuring compliance with the Official Languages Act in relation to health care, and there is no active offer of service in both official languages at a number of institutions.
Our review of tasks associated with health care provided by nurses and psychologists to offenders revealed that the level B language requirement for oral interaction is too low. We also noted that there were not enough positions designated bilingual to provide services in both official languages at all times in the institutions' health sector.
Many contractual agreements signed with health professionals do not contain a language clause, and most of the institutions do not have mechanisms to assess the language skills of contract health professionals and the quality of services provided by them in both official languages.
In order to ensure that health care is provided to its official language minority clientele, CSC will have to address these shortcomings by implementing the Commissioner's 11 recommendations.
