Francophone groups target McGill plans
School to open medical campus in the Outaouais
MONTREAL • Three francophone- rights organizations have launched a $ 30,000 radio campaign urging the Quebec government to cancel plans by McGill University to open a satellite medical school in the Outaouais region of West Quebec in 2020.
The government should instead let a francophone university run the medical program in the predominantly French- speaking region, say the heads of the Société Saint- Jean Baptiste ( SSJB), Impératif français and the Mouvement Québec français.
Jean-Paul Perreault, president of Impératif français, claimed McGill will provide instruction in English only to mainly francophone students for the first 18 months of the four-year undergraduate medical program.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Perreault told reporters Tuesday at the SSJB’s headquarters in Montreal.
“It’s humiliating and insulting,” he added.
Perreault stressed he and his colleagues have nothing against McGill, but the students deserve to be taught by professors at a francophone university.
David Eidelman, dean of medicine at McGill, disputed the claim that courses will be taught only in English for the first year and a half.
“As it stands, only the morning portion of the first 18 months of the undergraduate medical curriculum would be delivered by videoconference in English,” Eidelman said by email. “Afternoons would be in French, as would the rest of their studies in the region — undergraduate and residency.
“In summary, if the program were to begin today, 92 per cent of the total training, undergraduate and residency, would be in French, and eight per cent in English,” he said. “That being said, we are exploring the possibility of delivering it 100 per cent in French to best serve the region’s needs.”
Quebec has four medical schools, three of which are run by francophone universities. Despite its Englishspeaking historical origins, today many of McGill’s staff and students are francophone.
Eidelman noted McGill has been involved in the Outaouais for the past 30 years. In 2003, the McGill University Health Centre and the Quebec government struck an agreement that the Outaouais would fall within the MUHC’s territory of responsibility.
“McGill residency training was introduced in Family Medicine Units in Gatineau and Hull in 1988,” he said. “The program has since grown to 24 residents in the Outaouais and proven quite successful, yielding an 80- per- cent to 90- per- cent retention rate, i.e., residents who train there often stay there to practice. In 2010, McGill undergraduate students began completing their third- year clerkships there as well, to build on this success.”
This is not the first time francophone- rights groups have complained about a l ack of French i nvolving medical issues.
In 2008, the Mouvement français and the SSJB held a news conference claiming francophone patients were being “humiliated” in Montreal’s English- speaking hospitals. The MUHC reported six complaints about lack of service in French out of one million patient visits the previous year.
Officials with the Quebec Education and Health Departments were unavailable for comment Tuesday.