Long-term solution

A Francophone reached out to us after taking part in a webinar hosted by a non-profit organization that receives funding from the Ministry of Long-Term Care. She had signed up for the webinar as she is part of the family council for a long-term care home. She received a bilingual email from the Ministry inviting residents, families and caregivers to an information session that would provide important updates from the Ministry on changes to regulations that apply to long-term care homes. However, as we confirmed when we reviewed a recording of it, this webinar was in English only.

Although the webinar was hosted by the non-profit, all the slides presented were from the Ministry, and the speakers were public servants. The question-and-answer period was also in English only. At the end, attendees were told to email the Ministry if they had any further questions. The woman told us she would have liked to have had the presentation given in French, with an opportunity for viewers to ask questions in their preferred language during the webinar.

RESULT: We brought this case to the Ministry of Long-Term Care. Up to this point, the Ministry’s approach to informing Francophones was to send the organization a French version of the presented slides after the webinar so the organization could later post them on its website alongside the webinar recording.

As a result of our intervention, the organization pledged to host webinars in French, at which the Ministry would disseminate information via bilingual public servants who are able to give presentations and answer attendees’ questions in French. That pledge became concrete when the organization subsequently hosted a webinar on respiratory illness preparedness with the Ministry’s involvement.


Learn more about the French Language Services Unit which answers questions and takes complaints about services in French.
Read about how we helped other people in our Selected cases.