Access to French-language health services in Ontario is by no means a new issue, having been of concern to both the community and the provincial government for some time. However, despite the progress that has been made since the adoption of the French Language Services Act in 1986, in Southern Ontario access to primary health care services in French is far from guaranteed. At the heart of the problem are a number of factors: few or no recognized access points, a shortage of French-speaking human resources, poor utilization of the existing resources, programs poorly tailored to the needs of Southern Ontario's diverse francophone communities, and francophone scant input into the planning and management of primary health care services.
