With nurses, what happens is that each province governs its regulations. Here in New Brunswick, there's an act called the Nurses Act. I think they've just opened it and it needs to be updated, because I think it hasn't been updated since the 1970s, so they're looking at different ways that....
They know there's a nursing shortage and they're trying to expedite the process. At the end of the day, yes, we need nurses, but we need to have qualified nurses who are able to do the job safely. The reality here in New Brunswick is that a nurse will be vetted by the association here in New Brunswick. Once that happens, they don't need to write what we call the NCLEX exam across Canada. They get to work. However, what nurse managers are telling us in the province is that while some of these nurses function very well, some of these nurses....
How you nurse in India or how you nurse in Croatia is different from how you nurse in Canada, so some of these nurses have a huge nursing shock when they come in. That's when we talk about preceptorship, it's not only preceptorships for nursing students, but we need.... If we could have nurses come back—because we can't spare the ones who are on the floor now—to help these internationally trained nurses to get used to how we do nursing, they'll stay in the system.
You're right in saying that we need.... The reality is that we have nurses here right now in Canada who are not practising as RNs because they weren't vetted, so they need to go through the process, and it needs to be expedited.