Acadians say nursing homes should be bilingual, lament lack of progress from province of N.B.

New Brunswick Green Party Leader David Coon speaks with media in Fredericton, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Stephen MacGillivray)

FREDERICTON — An Acadian leader in New Brunswick says little progress has been made in providing bilingual services in the province’s nursing homes.

Nicole Arsenau-Sluyter, president of the Acadian Society of New Brunswick, said the new Liberal government needs to take steps to ensure more staff are able to care for residents in French. She hopes a new legislature committee focused on official languages will address a problem that has persisted for years in the country’s only officially bilingual province.

“We need to have seniors ... if they’re French, to be served in French,” Arsenau-Sluyter said Friday in an interview. “I mean, this is -- last time I looked -- a bilingual province.”

The group’s demand for more French services in nursing homes stems from a 2021 review of New Brunswick’s Official Languages Act, which recommended bringing nursing homes under its purview. The review noted insufficient minority-language services in some regions and said that as the province’s population ages, the problem will worsen.

The 2021 review acknowledged health-care workers for nursing homes were in short supply and proposed “strategic” improvements rather than “rigid new linguistic requirements.”

Benoit Bourque, a Liberal member of the legislature, said the new official languages committee that he chairs is scheduled to hold its first meeting next month, and the lack of bilingual services in nursing homes will be on the agenda.

He said the challenge is not in bilingual areas but in places where either English or French is the dominant language.

“We all want to see our elders being provided care in the language of their choice,” he said. “There’s the ideal situation, and then there’s the reality of things, and sometimes there is a gap. And in this particular case, as much as I would love to see that done everywhere perfectly, the reality is that it’s not that simple.”

Arsenau-Sluyter said one of the ways to address shortage of bilingual staff is to increase francophone immigration. “I’m getting older, and it would be lovely to be served my dinner in French when I’m in the seniors home here in Saint John,” she said.

Green Party Leader David Coon said tackling the language issues in nursing homes would be a good start for the committee. “I agree it’s a complicated, complex initiative to undertake,” he said. “We can eventually get to that goal, but if we don’t start, we’re never going to make it.”

Norma Dube of the Francophone Association of Seniors of New Brunswick noted that people tend to revert to their mother tongue as they age. She gave the example of a 95-year-old in a nursing home who is unable to tell the caregiver where she is hurting because of a language barrier.

“If language becomes a factor of vulnerability ... then language has to be on the table and opening up the Official Languages Act to cover these vulnerable seniors in nursing homes is appropriate,” Dube said. “We can’t wait another four years.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 24, 2025.

Hina Alam, The Canadian Press