5@6 Gathering
20th Anniversary Celebration of Société santé en français
To mark 20 years since its founding, the SSF will be paying tribute to some of the most important accomplishments in our history. SSF invites you to this friendly, festive gathering—a time to revisit some memorable events and turning points in our history. A panel of key players, who have demonstrated their committed solidarity, will highlight their memories, their experiences and their funny adventures! Don’t miss your chance to help celebrate SSF by hearing stories from our partners, catch a sneak peak of our new branding, and find out the winner of the Prix Hubert Gauthier.
With participation from:
- Armand Boudreau, Management Consultant and Healthcare Quality Improvement Advisor
- Hubert Gauthier
- Aurel Schofield, Member, Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada (AFMC)
Armand Boudreau
Management Consultant and Healthcare Quality Improvement Advisor
For over four decades, Mr. Boudreau has been a health professional, manager, senior executive, and expert advisor in the field of healthcare and social services. His training is in social services and public administration. After gaining experience in youth protection as a social worker, he spent over 25 years in senior management positions in the field of health and social services.
This included time spent as executive director of the Régie régionale de la santé et des services sociaux de l’Outaouais. Since 2002, he has been working as a management advisor and as a health and social services improvement consultant. He has also participated in studies and in developing and implementing various projects in the field of the Canadian Francophonie. Notably, he served as the first executive director of Société Santé en français.
Mr. Boudreau works in close collaboration with Healthcare Excellence Canada as a consultant and training officer with senior management teams from health and social services involved in service improvement initiatives.
Hubert Gauthier
Hubert Gauthier, MPA, has worked in the field of health and social services since 1980. He has held different strategic positions within the Quebec network, including assistant executive director of planning and programming for the Conseil régional de la santé et des services sociaux (CRSSS), Quebec City region; executive director of the CRSSS, Montreal region; and assistant deputy minister of the Ministère de la Santé et des Services Sociaux. For six years, Mr. Gauthier served as CEO of Saint-Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg. He was involved in several international placements on decentralizing services, organizing emergency services, change management, and linguistic and cultural sensitivity in healthcare and social service delivery. He has worked as a consultant since the start of 2005. He brings his management experience and knowledge of issues in the healthcare system to his work. The many meetings he has attended and his extensive involvement on the national scene give him extensive knowledge of the major trends and issues in the field of health and social services.
With his care and concern for improving the delivery of French-language health services both nationally and provincially, he became co-chair of the Consultative Committee for French-Speaking Minority Communities, a committee formed by Health Minister Allan Rock, in April 2000. Mr. Gauthier also sits on the board of the Conseil communauté en santé du Manitoba, a body tasked with developing and implementing French-language healthcare services in Manitoba.
In November 2000, Mr. Gauthier received an appointment as a member of the national steering committee of the Centre national de formation en santé (CNFS). The CNFS’s mandate is to give its members from French-speaking minority communities in Canada access to post-secondary study programs leading to healthcare professions. Mr. Gauthier became the president of Société Santé en français (which aims to improve French-language health services for minority Francophone communities) in December 2002, later serving as CEO of SSF from 2005 to 2009.
Mr. Gauthier has sat on the boards of the Canadian Nurses Association and of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). Lastly, in recognition of his efforts in the field of French-language health and social services, Mr. Gauthier received an honorary doctorate from the University of Manitoba in 2007.
Dr. Aurel Schofield
Member, Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada (AFMC)
Dr. Aurel Schofield was born in Baie-Sainte-Anne, New Brunswick. He is a graduate of family medicine (1980) from Laval University and the University of Toronto’s Five Weekend Fellowship.
In 1999, he co-chaired the Conférence Acadie-Sherbrooke, which highlighted the problem of insufficient access to French-language health services for official language minority communities (OLMCs). That same year, he gave the opening remarks at the launch of the World Health Organization’s Towards Unity for Health strategy. With his pentagram in hand, he served as an advisor and promoter for the strategy.
He has worked in a number of voluntary roles: as a member of Health Canada’s Consultative Committee for French-Speaking Minority Communities (2000–2006), as a founding member of Société Santé en français and the Consortium national de la formation en santé, and as founding president of the Société Santé et mieux-être en français du Nouveau-Brunswick. He was also president of SSF (2012–2018).
From 2002 to 2014, he was the founding director of the Centre de formation médicale du Nouveau-Brunswick and associate dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of Sherbrooke. From 2014 to 2020, he was the initiator and project lead of Franco Doc with the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada.
He has received several prestigious accolades including the Order of Canada (2014) for his work with OLMCs and his exceptional contribution to medical education.
