Demographic facts

According to the 2006 Canada Census:

• 41 % of newcomers to Canada speak neither English nor French.
  

• 45.7 % of Toronto area residents report a mother tongue other than English or French
  

• Toronto has the highest proportion of foreign-born inhabitants of any city in the world with over 100,000 new immigrants arriving each Year
  

• Canada is now home to its highest proportion of immigrants since 1931 accounting for one in five of the total population - 19.8 per cent - and up 13.6 per cent from five years earlier. By contrast, the entire Canadian population grew only 3.3 per cent in the same period.
  

• 224 Countries or former countries from which immigrants came in 2001-2006.
  

• 6,186,950 foreign-born people enumerated on census day. More than 1.1 million came to Canada between 2001-06.
  

• Almost 2/3 of the nation's foreign-born population resided in Canada's three biggest cities: Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal.
  

• The highest percentage of newcomers to Canada were from China (14 per cent), followed by India (11.6), the Philippines (7) and Pakistan (5.2). For the first time, the proportion of foreign-born immigrants from Asian and Middle Eastern countries (41 per cent) outstripped those of European heritage (37).
  

Healthcare facts

Research indicates that language barriers affect health outcomes for patients because of:

• Misdiagnosis
  

• Wrong referrals
  

• Wrong treatment
  

The recently completed research into the access to services by patient populations with limited proficiency in English and French in Ontario revealed that:

"Healthcare providers are reluctant to deal with LEP patients because of the extra time needed to overcome language barriers."

"In many cases, the outcome of a patient's condition is largely dependent on following the practitioner's care instructions at home. If the patient doesn't comply with the instructions, their health may be compromised. It goes without saying that if a patient doesn't understand the instructions in the first place, he or she won't be able to comply"

Using a friend or a family member as an interpreter does have its drawbacks: " These people typically have no medical training, which means that they often do not understand the practitioner's line of questioning. " Family and friends also try to minimize the patient's pain and discomfort, and as a result they try to supply answers instead of letting the patient speak.

From the findings of the HIN Sponsored Strengthening Access to Primary Health Care Research Project (2004):

"The error rate of untrained interpreters" (including family and friends) is sufficiently high as to make their use more dangerous in some circumstances than no interpreter at all. This is because it lends a false sense of security to both provider and client that accurate communication is actually taking place".

Depending on spoken language interpretation by individuals who have no training poses risks for both the patient and the provider.

Facts

Healthcare Interpretation Network