Human Resources committee  When you come to a country as a young person and you don't speak like they speak and you don't look like they look—and I didn't—it's a difficult experience for some years, until you finally get yourself assimilated in some manner. I understand the difficulties people have who com

Human Resources committee  I believe that is the correct understanding, yes.

Human Resources committee  Mr. Chairman, I think the member's question reflects a certain confusion between professional associations and professional regulatory bodies—for example, in Canada there's the Canadian Medical Association—

Human Resources committee  --and there's the Canadian Bar Association for lawyers. Neither of those regulates doctors or lawyers. Those are national organizations. They have provincial chapters, but they're national organizations. They don't control qualifications for acceptance or accreditation in law or

Human Resources committee  I only want to add, Mr. Chairman, if I may, that I relate to this subject because I am an immigrant myself, but from a very young age.

Human Resources committee  Yes, it would be great if we could just see across the country and everybody would know they had one regulator and it wouldn't be a problem. Ideally, theoretically, that's a solution in this field, no question. But in reality, it's not going to happen.

Human Resources committee  Funding is a vehicle for all kinds of creativity, and it may well be the case that, through funding, solutions can be found that can't be found by virtue of legislative restrictions.

Human Resources committee  Every case has to be looked at on its own merits. Sorry, did you have a particular area in mind when you asked your question?

Human Resources committee  I'm sure the government took advice from its lawyers regarding the Constitution, but I don't imagine there was a lot of time spent on that. Clearly, they are responsible for immigration, and they recognized there was a need for a program to facilitate the assimilation of immigran

Human Resources committee  The agreement on what?

Human Resources committee  I don't know the details of that agreement, but if that's the internal free trade agreement, if you like, between the provinces, to the extent that any regulatory regime in a province presented a barrier to economic trade, the argument could be made that the regulatory regime is

Human Resources committee  I can't address nurses specifically, but I believe there has been some significant progress made in enabling some of these qualifications to move from one province to the other. I know that in my own field there has been significant progress made. It used to be that a lawyer co

Human Resources committee  Well, I would think it depends on the professional field and the regulator in that field. I would imagine—and I say “imagine” because I don't specifically know—and it would stand to reason that an engineering regulatory agency in a province would have jurisdiction in respect to w

Human Resources committee  That might be the sort of information that Immigration can provide to immigrants to assist them in finding the place where they most likely would find employment in their professional field. Whether they do that or not, I'm not sure.

Human Resources committee  It may be that Immigration is able to provide that information to immigrants—where their qualifications most closely match the qualification requirements of a province so there would be less of an impairment to their practising their profession in that jurisdiction.