Immigrant women call for better interpreter access during births in Quebec City hospitals

An organization that supports pregnant immigrant women in Quebec City says patients do not have enough access to interpreters during births in hospitals. The director of the organization that provides pre-natal accompaniment says she is concerned that women are receiving care without giving full consent.

Understanding what is happening during a birth is "the base," says Marielle M'Bangha, the director of the Service de référence en périnatalité pour les femmes immigrantes de Québec.

She wants to see staff at Quebec City's university hospital centre, the CHU de Québec-Université Laval, offer interpretation services "systematically" and provide translated versions of consent forms and other documents to patients.

"It's absolutely crucial. Consent to care is given. If it's unclear what we are signing or why, there's a problem when it comes to making a free and informed choice," she says.

According to the Act respecting health services and social services in Quebec, English speakers have the right to receive services in English. Social and health-care services networks can use a different language when delivering services if it's recognized by Quebec's language watchdog. However, access is conditional on the health institution's available staff, funding and organizational resources.

M'Bangha made a complaint to the CHU last year following the experience of an unaccompanied English-speaking mother who did not have access to a hospital-provided interpreter when she underwent an emergency caesarian and a subsequent week-long hospital stay.

The president of the regional access committee to health and social services for English speakers in the Quebec City area, Brigitte Wellens, says there is still a lot of work left to do. Wellens says staff are not well informed about the rights of English speakers and users don't insist on being provided with translators.

The administrative responsibility to ask for an interpreter at the hospital falls on staff from the CHU de Québec. Since last fall, requests have been made to a provincial bank managed by Santé Québec, rather than a regional bank. In-person, virtual or telephone interpretation services are offered in more than 100 languages.

Situations are judged on a "case by case" basis, and "we do what we can to make sure to respond to the needs of users as quickly as possible," explains a spokesperson for the CHU de Québec.

In emergency situations or if an interpreter is not immediately available, staff can rely on "alternative methods" such as asking for help from a multilingual colleague, the use of "validated" translation applications, or agreements with private suppliers.

According to statistics provided by Santé Quebec, between 2020 and 2025, requests for interpreters doubled from 2,057 to 4,184 and were offered in 55 different languages.

Mary harbours painful memories around the birth of her first child. The single mother, who has no family in Canada, planned on giving birth accompanied by a doula. CBC is using a pseudonym to protect her identity because she fled her country for security reasons.

A routine check-up in May 2024 found the fetus was in distress and she was whisked away for an emergency C-section. Staff handed her French consent forms and warned her not to delay the potentially life-saving intervention when she asked to wait for her doula who could also act as an interpreter.

Mary, who speaks English but very little French, says she does not feel as if staff made sure she understood what was going on.