A conversation between

Hospital workers in Creole sparks a language complaint, even though it didn’t involve patients.

Two Montreal hospital workers of Haitian origin who sometimes speak to each other in Creole — and not exclusively in French — have raised the ire of the Office québécois de la langue française.

On Dec. 3, the OQLF warned the Hôpital Rivièredes-Prairies, an 88-bed psychiatric facility, to take action after an employee of the hospital complained to the French-language watchdog about the two workers.

The hospital was given until Dec. 20 to respond or face an investigation by an OQLF inspector and a fine of as much as $20,000. The two employees in question do speak French, and there appears to be no evidence that they refused to speak to patients or co-workers in French. But on occasion, they engaged in private conversations in Creole while on lunch or during some shifts in the presence of colleagues and patients.

On Dec. 10, the east-end hospital held a meeting of all the employees in the department where the two Creolespeaking workers are assigned, and reminded everyone that French is the official language of the workplace in Quebec, not Creole.

“Something happened in a ward where some employees — probably two Haitians — were talking to each other in front of a Québécois employee, a francophone, who didn’t understand what the two people were saying because those two employees were speaking in Creole,” Johanne Gagnon, the hospital’s director of communications, told The Gazette. “We met with the personnel and told them that they have to work in French.”

Gagnon, however, insisted that this was an isolated problem. “Certainly, our patients receive care and services in their mother tongue and we are a francophone hospital.

“I don’t think there is an epidemic of Creole (here),” Gagnon added. “But what do you want us to do? It’s an employee who made a complaint to the Office … and we had to do something by Dec. 20 or risk a significant fine.”

Jean-Pierre Le Blanc, a spokesman for the OQLF, confirmed the complaint, but he said he couldn’t comment because such matters are confidential.

The Charter of the French Language, adopted in 1977, states that French is the sole official language of Quebec. What’s more, the charter enshrines the right of every Quebecer to be served in French, and that “workers have a right to carry on their activities in French.”

However, the law does not prohibit workers in the public sector from engaging in a private conversation other than French while on the job.

Even if a conversation between two public-sector employees “is related to work,” they can still speak in another language as long as their exchange does not involve colleagues who don’t understand what they’re saying, Le Blanc explained.

Gagnon, who is also the hospital’s liaison with the OQLF, said the government agency did not provide her with the precise circumstances of the complaint.

“We’re in a very difficult position,” she added. “It’s a very particular situation, because we don’t know the name of the person who made the complaint, we don’t know the circumstances, we don’t know the moment that the employees spoke to each other in Creole, but we have an obligation to act because we received a (letter) from the Office.

“From what we know and from what we’ve been told, these employees were speaking in Creole during their work hours and they work next to (hospitalized adult) patients. If employees speak in Creole, the (psychiatric patients) could imagine all kinds of things.”

She noted that a similar complaint was filed against the hospital in 2011, suggesting that the same individuals are involved. She declined to specify what type of jobs the two workers hold.

Haitian Creole is one of Haiti’s two official languages, the other being French. Creole is based on 18th-century French and several West African dialects.

In October, the OQLF announced that it would “triage” complaints from the public after it was sharply criticized for its handling of the so-called Pastagate affair, in which an Italian restaurant was taken to task for using the word “pasta” exclusively on its menus.