Government of Canada Supports Initiative to Provide More French-Speaking Health Professionals

News Release
2009-193
December 3, 2009
For immediate release

OTTAWA - On behalf of the Honourable Leona Aglukkaq, Minister of Health, Mr. Pierre Lemieux, Member of Parliament for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, announced today an important investment that will help Francophone students at La Cité collégiale pursue opportunities in the health care field. These graduates are expected to increase the number of health care professionals who can serve French-speaking communities.

"La Cité collégiale is the largest French-speaking college of applied arts and technology in Ontario offering health training programs," said Mr. Lemieux. "With this announcement of more than $6 million in funding, the Government of Canada is demonstrating its commitment to improving access to health care for our official language minority communities."

La Cité collégiale, one of the members of the Consortium national de formation en santé (CNFS) will work with the CNFS to recruit and train students and professors in the health sector, maintain and improve access to this training, as well as promote research related to health training and health services access in French.

The Consortium national de formation en santé is an umbrella organization that represents 11 different universities and colleges outside of Quebec that offer studies in French in a variety of health training programs.

Today's funding announcement of $6,202,971 for La Cité collégiale is part of the $174.3 million in federal funding announced last month by the Honourable Senator Mockler (Edmundston) for French and English-speaking minority community health initiatives under the Government of Canada's Roadmap for Linguistic Duality.

"La Cité collégiale is pleased with this investment by the Government of Canada in training for Francophones living in minority communities," said La Cité collégiale President Andrée Lortie. "Today's announcement will enable the college to train more health and community services professionals and thus improve access to services in French in our communities."

Under the Roadmap, the Government of Canada outlined three priority areas for official languages related to health: health networking, training and retention initiatives for health professionals and official languages health projects.

The Government of Canada will continue to work in collaboration with the provinces and territories and official language minority communities to further improve access to health services by training and retaining health care professionals, supporting community networks and new local projects.

Mr. Pierre Lemieux, Member of Parliament for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell (centre), is shown Thursday, December 3, 2009, in Ottawa with Jocelyne Lalonde, Director General, Consortium national de formation en santé (left), and Andrée Lortie, President, La Cité collégiale, after having announced, on behalf of the Honourable Leona Aglukkaq, Minister of Health, an important investment that will help Francophone students at La Cité collégiale pursue opportunities in the health care field.

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