Well, when it was a veterans' hospital, it was a federal institution and we had relatively few complaints about the degree to which veterans were able to get services. One of the things we have done recently is to do a study of elderly anglophones in Quebec, and one of the things we observed was that there are, particularly off the island of Montreal, particular challenges for the elderly in getting health services in English. This is not so much from doctors—some 85% of doctors in Quebec are bilingual—but when the elderly are dealing with health services, they often don't get to deal with a doctor for many of their ailments and complaints. They're dealing with nurses, and nurses are much less likely to be bilingual. It is a challenge for the Quebec health system to have a sufficient number of bilingual health support staff who can serve the anglophone community.
One of the successes of the road map has been the funding of various health networks, including the language training program that was developed at McGill for teaching English to staff of the health provision institutions in Quebec. The last time I looked, I think there were 7,000—and now must be about 10,000—health care workers who have taken this course. There are limitations, nevertheless. When I was speaking to someone in Granby about how effective this had been, she told me that if a 14-year-old falls off his bicycle and breaks his arm, it means that the nurse at the local clinic can put his arm in a cast and serve him in English, but if you have a 55-year-old farmer who is suffering from early signs of Alzheimer's, that kind of service is much harder to find off the island of Montreal.
Part of what we did in our study was simply to identify the statistical services that are available and the various federal institutions that have some dealing with the elderly in Quebec. It was a process that helped lead to the creation of a new organization called Seniors Action Quebec.
In terms of transfer of responsibilities to specific institutions I think the same rules would apply: there has to be a language clause in the transfer and some kind verification mechanism to make sure those language clauses are being respected.