Thank you very much, members of the committee and fellow stakeholders.
As president of RésoSanté Colombie-Britannique and director of the Centre médical francophone de Vancouver, I'd like to begin by thanking you for the opportunity to speak with you today.
The Action Plan for Official Languages 2018-23: Investing in Our Future is, in my view, vital to the future of the francophone community here, in the province. The action plan sets out investments that are more than 20% greater than those in the previous roadmap. If properly targeted, these funding commitments will make it possible to meet the expectations of many in our community, expectations that have been clearly laid out. For these people, their quality of life, sense of belonging and hope for a bright future, as Mr. Trudeau says, are largely dependent on access to services, resources and community activities in French.
This is especially important in health care, where language goes hand in hand with the delivery of optimal services. In other words, people have the right to be sick in their mother tongue, French. The action plan makes clear the importance of innovative projects in improving access to French-language health services.
Working at the St. Boniface Hospital, as a very young infectious disease specialist—longer ago than I care to admit—I could clearly see how well this type of infrastructure served the francophone community. Its existence was entirely warranted given the geography and size of Manitoba's francophone community. That isn't the case here, in B.C., however, where the community is far more spread out and diverse, I would say. Regardless, one thing is clear: the community is growing. I hope I'm not about to contradict what the school board told you, but it serves more than 6,000 students and has seen its student body increase by more than 25% over the past five years.
When people tell you that B.C.'s francophone community is in decline, you should know that is absolutely not true. More and more families are choosing to live in French and enrol their children in French-language schools. This really highlights how important French is to us. All those people are entitled to receive health services in the language of Molière.
How are we going to deliver those services? RésoSanté Colombie-Britannique put together a directory of health care professionals who wish to serve patients in French. Nearly two weeks ago, we released the latest edition of the directory, and I can tell you that more than 2,000 professionals in every corner of the province have expressed their desire to serve people in French. That's right, I said 2,000, so the supply is clearly there.
Over the past five years, I've had the pleasure of establishing the Centre médical francophone de Vancouver, located just two blocks from here. If you ever have the chance, whether during this visit or another, I encourage you to come by for a visit. The medical centre was integrated into an existing clinic. The centre is well-recognized by the community as a point of service for French-language health care. In the course of a year, we can accommodate more than 1,600 visits from francophones who use the medical centre as a gateway. You might liken it to a much smaller version of St. Boniface Hospital; it's a much smaller institution delivering a much more limited range of services.
What can we accomplish over the next five years? As I see it, the challenge is really to match supply with demand and use the directory as a tool. People will use the centre as a gateway. We use the directory to refer them to health professionals who have made clear their desire to serve patients in French. New techniques like telemedicine can be used to serve those who live in remote areas. The action plan is explicit about improving access to health services, and this may be one way of doing that. It's something we need to recognize, because we need to create the infrastructure to improve those services.
The second thing I want to draw your attention to is that the action plan mentions the need for better access to mental health and addiction services.
You are currently in the heart of the opiate crisis. Keep in mind that, every day in this province, more than four people die as a result of opiate overdoses. You may have seen on the news that, on July 27 alone, 130 people in the Downtown Eastside overdosed and required medical attention. Think about it: 130 overdoses in the span of 24 hours. That's a serious problem. Now think about this: 7% of the population in the Downtown Eastside identifies as francophone. That's roughly 1,500 people we could reach more effectively if we were able to provide health services to them in French.
The research group at the Centre médical francophone de Vancouver has identified a number of shelters where nearly 25% of the incoming clientele in a single evening are francophone. Not only are there many of them, but also, they appear to gather in the same places.
We've set up a temporary community clinic, as a pilot, in an effort to encourage these people to access health care. By promoting and expanding these kinds of projects, we are able not just to offer more French-language services, as the public is demanding, but also to address a major crisis.
In closing, I want to underscore how important it is to find ways of improving health care services in French. If we do our job properly, public health will improve so much so that the English-speaking community around us will want to adopt our best practices. That is our goal.
Thank you.