With the support of the other health planning entities, we made specific proposals to the Ontario government, in particular on the Connecting Care Act, 2019 and the regulation on French language health planning entities.

Although this feedback gave rise to positive exchanges with the most senior officials, most of the recommendations put forward by the Regroupement des Entités were not included in the legislation.

In a letter to entity boards, however, the Minister of Health suggested using administrative tools to respond to the issues and priorities raised by the Regroupement des Entités. It is in this spirit that we have offered to collaborate with the government and proposed that a working group be quickly set up.

In essence, we want to make sure that the planning entities are recognized as key interlocutors for all stakeholders in the health care system. We also want them to have a strong mandate and to have at their disposal the necessary means to carry out this work. All this so that Francophones can live healthy lives in French.

In conclusion, none of this would have been possible without the support and commitment of the members of our Board of Directors; I thank them most sincerely for giving me the privilege of presiding as Board Chair. I would also like to salute the extraordinary work of our President-CEO and her team of professionals.

Finally, as I write these lines, our community – like the entire planet – has been struck by an unprecedented health crisis. More than ever we realize the importance of having access to quality health services. I also applaud all the health care workers who ensure our collective safety. My special thoughts go out to the frontline workers and military personnel who are risking their health and even their lives to care for Ontarians. On behalf of the Réseau, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Alain-Michel Sékula
MBA, CMC, Colonel (Honorary) FAC-CAF

As part of the health care system transformation, we supported the Premier’s Council on Improving Healthcare and Ending Hallway Medicine by organizing a broad consultation among the Francophone population. Arranged in collaboration with the Regroupement des Entités de planification des services de santé en français, this regional focus group was held simultaneously across 16 sites in Ontario, including Ottawa, Casselman and Kingston. Overall, 250 Francophone stakeholders and participants had an opportunity to comment on the conclusions of the first interim report Hallway Health Care: A System Under Strain (this link will open in a new tab) (January 2019). Their feedback was reflected in the Council’s second report, A healthy Ontario: Building a sustainable health care system (this link will open in a new tab) (June 2019).

With a view to supporting the provision of French language health services in a system undergoing transformation, the Réseau’s corporate members committee met three times this year. This committee allows the Réseau to work more closely with health service providers on the entire service continuum.

On November 13, 2019, the Réseau held the second edition of the Salon Santé Kingston. With “Innovative Solutions for Serving Francophone Patients: A Design Thinking Day” as its theme, this bilingual interactive event focused on providing support to health and social service professionals looking to improve French language services in their organization. In all over 40 managers, frontline workers and members of the South East’s Francophone community took part. Another of the event’s objectives was to take stock of French language health services in the region, ten years after the City of Kingston was designated under the French Language Services Act. The Salon Santé Kingston 2019 was much appreciated by participants: 87% of them rated the event as “excellent” or “very good”.

Finally, we are preparing to launch our most important community engagement initiative. Over the coming months, Francophones will be asked to share their care experiences, namely through an online questionnaire. Such continuous information collection will give us a better understanding of how you receive services “on the ground” and allow us to integrate your feedback into our advice to the health care system.

As of the end of 2019-2020, the Réseau can count on the support of 962 individual members, a 9% increase over last year. We also salute our 73 corporate members. Thank you for your commitment to French language services.

OZi makes it possible to collect and analyze essential information with a view to inform the health care system transformation on all issues related to French language services. Not only do the data enable us to equip new health care stakeholders – such as Ontario Health Teams and the provincial Ontario Health agency – but they are also of interest to other ministries, especially the Ministry of Long-Term Care and the Office of the Associate Minister of Mental Health and Addictions.

Finally, the Réseau continues to fulfill its mandate as the resource network for the Société Santé en français (SSF) for the national strategy on evidence-based data. We are collaborating with the other SSF-member French language health networks to stimulate the implementation of OZi across Canada. Thanks to major funding from Health Canada, we have carried out a study of the environment and needs in six provinces and territories. We have also improved the architecture and functionalities of the portal to make it more adaptable to these different environments. And we have developed an application concept for referring Francophones to existing French language health services. We are continuing this work with our partners so that other minority Francophone communities can benefit from the impacts of OZi.

Our report on long-term care also contains recommendations for improving the provision of French language services, promoting the creation of Francophone living environments and establishing a framework to officially recognize the “Francophone character” of certain organizations. We have already shared these recommendations with the Champlain Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) and have initiated collaborative work to implement them.

In the South East, we conducted a major literature review and impact analysis for our report on improving access to primary care in the City of Kingston. This work enabled us to point out the lack of evidence-based data on primary care in French in the area and highlighted the lack of primary care providers designated under Ontario’s French Language Services Act. Once we complete our analysis, we will propose a primary care strategy for Kingston’s Francophone population to the South East LHIN.

In the context of the health care system transformation, we were involved in the creation of Ontario Health Teams (OHTs). At the provincial level, we provided the Ministry of Health with a series of recommendations promoting the application of a Francophone lens to OHT evaluation. In collaboration with the RISE platform and our various Francophone partners, we helped organize a provincial webinar on mobilizing our Francophone communities and improving care for these communities. At the local level, we supported all the OHTs in our region with respect to their provision of French language services, for instance, by sitting on various committees and providing evidence-based data on the French language services capacity of different stakeholders.

Finally, we participated in provincial consultations on modernizing public health and emergency health services. In addition to sharing our recommendations with the Ministry of Health and special advisor Jim Pine, we supported our local partners, in particular Ottawa Public Health, with their local consultation efforts.

Catalyzed first by the adoption of the Connecting Care Act, 2019 and subsequently by the Proposal for a new regulation: Ontario Regulation made under the Connecting Care Act, 2019 – Engagement with the Francophone Community under section 44 of the Act) (this link will open in a new tab), these strategic reflections informed our dialogue with the Ministry of Health, particularly with regard to the legislation presented by the Ontario government.

The members of the Regroupement adopted a common position on the mandate of the planning entities; in our view, the entities should have the responsibility of advising all health care system stakeholders (including the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Long-Term Care, the provincial Ontario Health agency and Ontario Health Teams) on matters related to French language services. The entities should also be able to intervene at the provincial, regional and local levels.

Although the recommendations and changes put forward by the entities have not been explicitly included in the legislation, we are continuing our collaboration with the provincial government to find administrative solutions that address our concerns.

Finally, as 2019-2020 comes to an end, we can clearly see the relevance of creating, in April 2018, a not-for-profit organization focused on developing IT solutions for collecting and managing data on French language services. The Réseau can thus concentrate on its regional mandate of community engagement and French language health services planning, while benefiting from the data collected by OZi. At the same time, the NPO 10551040 Canada Institut – whose scope and mission go beyond Eastern and Southeastern Ontario – is busy developing and exporting OZi to the other provinces and territories.

In conclusion, many of our achievements in 2019-2020 would not have been possible without the support of our financial partners: Health Canada and the Société Santé en français (SSF), the Ministry of Health and the Champlain and South East LHINs.

Complete financial statements will be presented during the Annual General Meeting 2020.