LANG Committee Report

This study is pursuant to a motion agreed to in the House of Commons on 19 March 2003 by a majority vote of 153 to 35, in which the Standing Committee on Official Languages of the House of Commons was asked to report no later than October 31 of this year on the following question:

That Bill C-202, An Act to amend the Canada Health Act (linguistic duality), be not now read a second time but that the Order be discharged, the bill withdrawn and the subject matter of the bill be referred to the Standing Committee on Official Languages to report back to the House on or before October 31, 2003.¹

The Minister of Health, the Honourable Anne McLellan, and the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, the Honourable Stéphane Dion, also wrote to the Chair of the Standing Committee on Official Languages asking that the Committee explore other mechanisms for promoting better access to health care for the official language minority communities.

In accordance with the mandate given it, the Committee decided to focus its efforts along a first axis, the determination of the legal bases of the delivery of health care to the linguistic minorities. Although the Ontario Court of Appeal put an end to a long judicial saga on 7 December 2001 by deciding that Ottawa’s Montfort Hospital should be fully maintained, debate as to whether the linguistic minorities have or should have an individual or collective right to health care and social services² in their language continues. In Chapter 1, we present a summary of the various legal opinions we requested on that question.

In Chapter 2, the Committee presents a brief overview of the situation regarding access to health care in the minority language, including current initiatives to improve the situation. The $119 million investment announced this past March in the health component of the Canadian government’s Action Plan for Official Languages³ will be a "lever" for networking, primary care and training.

In Chapter 3, as we shall see, the entire question of access to health care for linguistic minorities must be addressed within the broader debate on the future of Canada’s health system. The current mechanisms for intergovernmental cooperation must be used to improve the health services offered to linguistic minorities and, in particular, to ensure their long-term continuation. The Committee believes this issue is too important and fundamental to be reviewed every five years subject to available funding and the goodwill of political authorities of the moment. We all know that health has been the subject of intense discussions between the federal and provincial governments for some years now. It is high time that matters pertaining to the health care provided to the linguistic minorities be given the attention they deserve by the decision-makers in place. Those discussions must lead to the implementation of structural and long-term measures.