During Quebec’s Intercultural Encounters Week, which celebrates the rich diversity in Quebec, the Anti-Racism Committee is promoting an essential but still little-known concept: cultural safety.

What is cultural safety?

Essentially a social approach, cultural safety is a necessity in our workplaces. It aims to ensure that every person, regardless of their background, feels safe, respected and valued.

For the FIQ’s Anti-Racism Committee, it is a concrete tool for combating all forms of racism (systemic racism within institutions, everyday racist gestures, micro-aggressions at work). The concept of cultural safety ensures that institutions recognize the historical and cultural realities of marginalized groups.

Having taken shape in New Zealand in the 1980s in response to discrimination experienced by Maori people in the healthcare system and adopted in Quebec through Joyce’s Principle, cultural safety is defined by those who experience it. It requires healthcare professionals to listen and challenge the prevailing norms in order to build inclusive environments.

In concrete terms, it means offering more training in the health network to raise workers’ awareness about the history and reality of historically discriminated against groups, putting mechanisms in place that will enable us to adapt our practices so as to avoid bias and exclusion and creating spaces in which minority voices are heard and respected.

During Quebec’s Intercultural Encounters Week, the Anti-Racism Committee invites all healthcare professionals to reflect on whether our environments are safe for everyone. Cultural safety is not a concept or an option, it’s our collective responsibility. But above all, it is in working together that we can build a more just, humane society and health network where people are listened to.

Linda Gingras and Mouloud Seddiki, members of the FIQ Anti-Racism Committee