Quebec's Eternal Language Wars

"I want to practise here. I love this country. I'm attached to Montreal."
"My wife is Quebecois and francophone ... but I am not good enough according to the Office [Office Quebecois de la langue francaise/OQLF]."
Amer Omar, 37, Egyptian-born ophthalmologist/Canadian citizen

"How do you expect him [Amer Omar] to truly treat his patients properly without knowing how and when you use an accent circonflexe?"
"Tell him to move to northern New Brunswick ... oh wait ... no, they only accept French-speaking medical staff here, too."
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"It seems to me a little bit draconian that they [OQLF] would go to suspension."
"It would be too bad to lose such a [medical] talent to another province."
James Shea, president, Quebec Community Groups Network

Greg Henkenhaf/Postmedia News

"But there's also a reasonable [sized] English population in Montreal who need to see psychiatrists. I definitely didn't have a shortage of patients, or have any difficulty serving the population that came to the hospital." 
"To me it almost didn't seem worth the effort. The amount of work I would have had to put in to pass would have interfered with my ability to do my job [as a medical practitioner in Quebec]."
Dr. James Ross, Toronto psychiatrist

Dr. Ross meant to practise psychiatry in Quebec. He had attended McGill, worked at an anxiety disorder clinic at a hospital in Montreal, because he did his residency in psychiatry at McGill though he was originally a Toronto native. But to qualify to practise in Quebec medical practitioners require not only a provincial medical license recognizing their professional qualifications, but they also must pass a stringent language test to demonstrate their proficiency in the French language.

Dr. Ross wrote that exam on two occasions and on two occasions he failed the test. He passed the comprehension element but, he pointed out, his examiners appeared obsessed with grammar -- gender agreements, correct noun tenses, and other finicky little details. That he was fully capable of producing good medical assessments in French, and treated many of his patients using his French language skills failed to impress the OQLF examiners.

And he, in turn failed to be impressed with their priorities. After having made the attempt to qualify for the French test, he simply felt it wasn't worth time and effort to keep working at it to satisfy those examiners' entitled sense of judging on a thin thread of language bias that the province could do without the professional expertise of Dr. Ross. So he returned the compliment, moving back to Ontario in 2012 to take up work as a staff psychiatrist at Victoria Hospital in London.

The braub-constricted, mean-prioritized little minds are at it again. And this time really more than ever doing all they can to deprive Quebecers of an impeccable source of invaluable expertise. The sole specialist in hereditary retinal disease practising in Quebec has failed to satisfy the petty language demands of a resentful-of-English bureaucracy. Dr. Amer Omar's temporary permit enabling him to practise in Quebec has been revoked.

The permit was granted the 37-year-old doctor who has been a citizen of Canada for 15 years, on condition that he pass the French test. That temporary permit is now expired. And so, without a doubt, must be Dr. Omar's patience. This is a highly respected health professional, co-author of important scientific studies such as one titled "novel insights into the molecular pathogenesis of CYP4V2-associated Bietti's retinal dystrophy".

The examiners are decidedly not moved by this man's medical-scientific credentials; they are fixated on the unforgivable fact that in his French test he was guilty of too many errors in syntax. Moreover, asked to compose and write 200 words on a topic, he managed to write a mere 190. This man's first language is Arabic, but he is fully bilingual; Arabic/English with a "professional working proficiency" in French. He performed creditably on the oral portion of the test.

The writing segment of the test is what failed him time and again. In fact, fully one dozen times he failed to pass the writing section. His last effort gave him a sobering score of 36 percent. A three-month period must elapse before he will be permitted to try the test again, in hopes of passing, at which point "he can obtain a regular permit to practise", according to a spokeswoman for Quebec's College of Physicians.

The good doctor himself is amazed at the power vested in the language agency, enabling them to overrule those of the licensing college for physicians. And he is rather upset at leaving his patients "orphaned" of his ongoing medical care. This leaves a credentialed medical specialist who is a consultant ophthalmologist at the Montreal Retina Institute specializing in retinal and macular degeneration without the capacity to share his expertise with those who need it most.

This is so typical of the picayune-minded pathology of Quebec's defense of the French language in its cultural definition as a sacred trust, leading it repeatedly to embark on absurd missions to ensure that English or any other upstart language does not creep into public discourse, that the province and its watchdogs never fail to metaphorically and realistically shoot themselves in their language-bunioned feet.

 Quebec's Language Paranoia

"It was our practice to post signs in the two languages, considering that 15 percent of the population of our region is anglophone."
"So we had to take down certain signs, in particular for directions."
Genevieve Cloutier, spokeswoman, Health authority, Gaspe, Quebec

"All the signs are bilingual. It's bigger in French. But in the town of Gaspe, there are a lot of people who speak English. As far as I'm concerned, with the Office de la langue francaise, enough is enough."
"Yes, we  have a yellow strip on our cards. But most of us have it in our pockets. How are they [anglophone patients] supposed to know?"
"Get out. That's the message I'm getting. If you don't want to live in Quebec and speak French, just get out of the province."
Margo Adams, nurse, Hotel-Dieu, Gaspe 

Google Street View    Hôpital Hotel-Dieu de Gaspé

"This is a public establishment trying to accommodate its clientele, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Not only is it a public establishment, it's a public health and social services establishment where fifteen percent of the population is English-speaking."
"[The province should regulate] to make it clear that access to service means access to information too, and signs happen to be a way that people get information rather than running around trying to find people wearing yellow badges."
Eric Maldoff, chairman, Quebec Community Groups Network, health and social services committee

Canada is an officially bilingual country. New Brunswick, given its large French population is also officially bilingual, and throughout the rest of Canada municipalities make an effort to provide French language services where population density deems it common sense to do so. In some non-bilingual provinces, other than federal offices, bilingual services are considered a requirement.

It is, after all, common courtesy in a bilingual country to serve people in their official language of choice.

In Quebec, however, things are different; the provincial operates as a unilingual entity. Learn French or flounder. In the United States, courtesy and tourism combine to produce dual English/French signage on highways. It's a matter of practicality, courtesy and safety. Cross the boundary from the United States into Canada in the Province of Quebec and no such even perfunctory recognition that an English-majority demographic enters the province as tourists or to transit to Ontario.

And in Quebec when municipal authorities make an effort to be helpful in recognition that not all residents have familiarity with the French language, the Office quebecois de la langue comes prowling. As the province's language watchdog, it takes it mission and its authority very seriously. And so it was when it informed a Quebec hospital that bilingual signs it posted to aid in guiding anglophones, that English signage was not permitted.

In the past ten years the health authorities had authorized bilingual signage "to facilitate access to our services in English". However, as the bulk of patients using the hospital speak French, only health and public safety warnings are permitted to be posted under the provincial language laws. Hospital hallway signs, as an example, to guide in English where a particular department can be found, are out.

Bilingual signs indicating to anglophones where X-rays are taken now will simply read "rayons X". Visiting hour signage will now also be in evidence only in French. Nurse Margo Adams, who works at the hospital complained that older people who haven't learned to speak and read French will be deleteriously impacted by the removal of bilingual signage. Instead, they are advised to look for English-speaking staff, who will have a yellow strip on their I.D. cards.

According to a spokesman for the language watchdog, anglophone patients remain entitled to treatment in English, assuming they find their way to their doctor. However, the Charter of the French Language, Bill 101, emphatically stipulates that unless a majority of a hospital's users speak a language beyond French no bilingual signage will be posted. "The charter  says that health services have to post signs in French, except all the signs concerning health and safety", he intoned.