Thank you. I appreciate your recognition of the value of the profession, and I agree that there are shortages of occupational therapists.
When we look at the distribution of occupational therapists in Canada, we see that about 95% of occupational therapists work in urban areas. When you go to smaller northern communities, you're not going to see many occupational therapists. So there is an issue in terms of distribution.
How can we facilitate internationally educated occupational therapists going into some of these areas? We've been looking at what kinds of resources we can provide that would allow them to participate, if they do go to an area, to help them so they don't have to be in an urban setting to be able to access resources. The bridging program we have been working on is available online, but we also try to set them up with mentors in their community to allow them to be able to develop their skills where they are.
I think that is important. We don't have that many people coming into the country. We have probably about 50 to 100 people coming each year, so we really try to centralize and have one common curriculum and one common program across the country, and to provide it online, because if we tried to do a separate program in each jurisdiction, it would be very difficult to manage in terms of costs. If we make it as accessible as possible, people can participate.