Highlights
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The House of Commons Standing Committee on Official Languages asked the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages to verify whether the Government of Canada is complying with the Act when it provides health care directly to certain groups or communities and whether it ensures that its obligations are met when it transfers responsibility to third parties.
The audit focused on four federal institutions that deliver health care directly: Health Canada (health care for First Nations and Inuit communities), Veterans Affairs Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Correctional Service Canada.
In general, the audit showed that managers from the four institutions were well aware of their responsibilities in terms of official languages. However, the Commissioner noted shortcomings regarding the active offer of service in the four institutions. The weaknesses that were observed include the lack of signage for visual active offer (at Veteran Affairs Canada), and active offer by staff, either in person (at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Correctional Service Canada) or over the telephone (at Health Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Correctional Service Canada). These weaknesses have the effect of reducing the number of instances in which the language of the minority can be used.
Moreover, Health Canada, Veterans Affairs Canada and Correctional Service Canada require a level of bilingualism from their health professionals that is too low when it comes to oral interaction, given the complexity of the interactions involved in carrying out the duties.
Our audit also revealed that, with the exception of Health Canada, language clauses are not systematically included in contractual agreements with health professionals when bilingual services are required. The same is also true of financial agreements with the provinces and health centres that have bilingual requirements. The institutions must ensure that their official languages obligations continue to be met when they transfer health care services to third parties.
Additionally, the Commissioner noted the general absence of official languages quality assurance monitoring mechanisms within the four institutions. Such mechanisms would ensure not only greater respect of their obligations in terms of health care delivery, but more importantly, would demonstrate the institutions’ respect towards the clientele who require the services.
The Commissioner issued 30 recommendations to the four institutions concerned in order to help them improve direct bilingual health care services to their respective restricted and identifiable clientele. Of these, six each were made to Health Canada and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, while seven recommendations were addressed to Veterans Affairs Canada, and 11 to Correctional Service Canada.
Following the audit, all four institutions prepared an action plan to implement the recommendations. They are found in appendices A to D of this report. We are generally satisfied with many of the measures proposed by the institutions to implement the recommendations addressed to them and, in cases where the measures proposed by the institutions do not seem entirely satisfactory, we have added specific comments in this regard.
We understand that, due to the nation-wide shortage of bilingual health care professionals, the implementation of the recommendations regarding language skills for staff and professionals hired under contract will be difficult to carry out. These challenges will require greater commitment, creativity and initiative on the part of the institutions so that they can meet their official languages obligations.
We are pleased to report that, since our audit, these institutions have already taken several measures to implement a number of recommendations. We will assess the implementation of the recommendations at the time of our audit follow-up. We maintain that full implementation of the recommendations will enable the institutions to meet their obligations in providing direct health care services in the language of choice of their clientele.
