Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to the members of the committee. It is a genuine pleasure to be here today.
First, I would like to acknowledge that the land on which the Société Santé en français sits is part of the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people.
Before proposing two amendments to Bill C‑13 regarding the health of the francophone and Acadian minority communities, I would first like to provide you with some figures on access to health services in French in Canada. These figures date back to 2020 and come from a survey that the Léger organization conducted for Health Canada. They reveal how official language communities perceive access to health services in French.
The first finding is that access to health services in French still faces challenges. One-third of survey respondents reported that they had received health services entirely in French, another third that they had received partial access, and the remaining third that they had received no services in French.
The second finding was that progress had been made in providing access to services but that there had also been some backsliding. Some 19% of survey respondents said they had seen improvements in the previous 10 years, while 42% had seen no improvement, and 16% reported that the quality of access had declined. The remaining 23% had no opinion on the matter.
Lastly, the survey reveals that the main barriers to access to health services in French stem from a lack of human resources, fear of long waiting times in hospitals, a lack of information available in French and concerns about receiving poor-quality services.