This story is part of Welcome to Canada, a CBC News series about immigration told through the eyes of the people who have experienced it.
Maya Cholette-Tétrault, a family physician, welcomes a patient into her office at a clinic in Parc-Extension.
The woman, who recently emigrated from India, is here to discuss her pregnancy and is joined by a third person by video link — an interpreter who speaks Hindi.
The CLSC serves one of the most diverse neighbourhoods in Montreal, and health-care workers regularly treat patients who recently arrived in Canada from around the world.
For the past two years, the clinic has used an online translation service to help patients better communicate with staff.
Cholette-Tétrault says she uses it for roughly one out of every four patients. Some of her patients arrived in Montreal only a few weeks ago and struggle to communicate in English or French.
“It completely changes my practice,” Cholette-Tétrault said. “These patients go through their day not being able to communicate with many people. Sometimes we end up helping with not just medical things, but other things that are super important — like finding a place to live.”
The patient, when asked through the interpreter whether she likes the service, smiled and said, “yes.”
As tensions over the use of English and French in Quebec persist, one public clinic has turned to a translation service to help deliver care to patients who don’t communicate in either language.
Research backs it up
The service, provided by Voyce, a company specializing in medical translation, offers interpreters who speak 240 languages and dialects. The process is simple: open the app on a tablet or phone, select a language and a translator pops up on the screen within seconds.
Aurelia Di Fabrizio, who oversees the program at the CIUSSS West-Central Montreal, said it has allowed health-care workers to better communicate with patients and save money in the process.
In a province where language politics are ever-present — and last year there were questions about whether English speakers could receive care in their preferred language — Di Fabrizio said the first priority was always ensuring patients can communicate with their doctor.
“At the end of the day, we have to offer care to our patients that come into our clinics, into our hospital, and it’s actually a much bigger issue to not be able to communicate with our patients,” she said.
“It causes huge quality of care concerns.”
Research overwhelmingly suggests that access to care in a patient’s first language dramatically improves health outcomes.
A 2022 study published in the Canadian Medical Association journal, for instance, found that patients who speak languages other than English are up to 54 per cent less likely to die or experience other severe health outcomes when paired with physicians who speak the same language as them.
A new survey commissioned by CBC suggests, as well, that new immigrants have had difficulty accessing care, particularly in Quebec. A little more than 1,500 adult Canadian residents took part in the Pollara survey commissioned by CBC News between Nov. 1 and 18, 2024. They all arrived in Canada in the past 10 years.
Among the respondents, three out of five newcomers in Quebec (62 per cent) said they were not satisfied with Canada’s health-care system, in comparison to 44 per cent of total respondents across Canada.
‘I talk to my patients’
The translation service was piloted in Parc-Ex and has expanded to other clinics on the territory, as well as the Jewish General Hospital, Di Fabrizio said.
Previously, the CLSC relied on in-person translators, who had to be alerted ahead of time and were far more expensive. They also had to be paid if a patient was late or the clinic was behind on its appointments.
Perle Feldman, a longtime physician who works at the clinic, said relying on in-person translation has been an impediment over the years. She recalled one of her first patients as a resident was a woman who was trying to get pregnant, and had her sister-in-law as her interpreter.
“It was very, very awkward because you can imagine the questions that you have to ask during an infertility workup,” she said.
Feldman said online translation has been helpful and she hopes to see it expanded further.
“We have a very vulnerable population,” she said.
“People who are in very difficult situations socially, financially, we want to provide them with good medicine, and good medicine is based on communication. I am not a vet. I do not do veterinary care. I talk to my patients.”
