Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'm Carol White, director general of the labour market integration directorate at Human Resources and Skills Development Canada. Our area of responsibility is foreign credential recognition, labour mobility, and labour market information.
On behalf of RHSDC, I would like to thank the Committee for the opportunity to participate in a study of health human resources.
In my remarks, I would like to provide a brief overview of HRSDC's investments and activities as they relate to the labour market integration of health human resources, particularly the recognition of foreign-trained professionals.
HRSDC recognizes it cannot achieve its objective--which is having the best-educated, most skilled, and most flexible workforce in the world--by working alone, given that provincial and territorial governments and regulatory bodies have the primary jurisdiction over regulated occupations, including those in the health professions.
I want to speak first about labour mobility. Labour mobility is the freedom of workers to practise their occupation or trade wherever opportunities exist.
The Agreement on Internal Trade provides the basis for improving labour mobility for regulated occupations; including 29 health professions.
On January 16, 2009, first ministers signed a new agreement which included a series of amendments to the labour mobility chapter that will enhance the mobility of Canada's health human resources.
This marks a significant milestone. As of April 1, 2009, the credentials of Canadians' health care workers are to be recognized across provincial and territorial boundaries. This revised chapter of the agreement on internal trade states that any worker certified for an occupation by a regulatory authority by one province or territory is to be certified for that occupation by all others. Any exception to this mobility must be justified to meet a legitimate objective, such as the protection of public health or safety.
With full mobility in place, governments now have an added responsibility to ensure there is a consistent evaluation and entry point into the Canadian labour market. HRSDC's foreign credential recognition program provides contribution funding and works with provinces, territories, stakeholders, and other partners to facilitate the assessment and recognition of qualifications acquired in other countries.
Priorities for funding under the program include projects that are national in scope, that address priority occupations and sectors or those that have been identified as a priority by provincial/territorial governments. For any national project, there must also be clear evidence of provincial/territorial involvement and support.
Typical project activities that are funded through this contribution program are research and analysis, planning and process development, design and development of tools that will assist regulators in assessing the credentials and qualifications of the internationally trained, activations of systems to assess credentials, the development and dissemination of information, and partnership development and related implementation activities.
Since 2003 the foreign credential recognition program has made direct investments of over $11.8 million in health-related occupations. This amounts to approximately 19% of the program's overall $63.5 million grants and contributions funding since 2003. These investments have funded 28 different projects and represent 11% of all projects funded through this program.
Managers of the program maintain a regular dialog with Health Canada and committees of experts in the health sector in order to ensure the strategic investment of program funds and the prevention of funding duplication. Input and feedback from Health Canada officials are sollicited on health-related project proposals received by the program.
The foreign credential recognition program has made significant progress in strengthening the foreign credential recognition capacity of regulated and non-regulated occupations, and has facilitated strategic foreign credential recognition partnerships and initiatives across Canada and overseas. Many of these investments have directly contributed to the efforts of medical professions to address the recommendations made by the Canadian task force on licensure of international medical graduates in 2004.
The foreign credential recognition program began work with regulated professions in three priority occupations, two in the health sector, including physicians and nurses. Since that time our work has expanded to nine other health occupations. To give you a brief example of some of the kinds of projects we've funded, we made investments with the Medical Council of Canada to provide international medical graduates with increased access to the assessment and evaluation tools before coming to Canada.
The Medical Council of Canada developed an Internet-based self-assessment evaluation examination to help international medical graduates determine their readiness to challenge the assessment process for physicians in Canada. The availability of this MCC evaluation examination has increased approximately threefold since 2004 and it is now available in 20 locations, 12 of them outside of Canada.
The Medical Council of Canada has also created the physician credentials registry of Canada using funds from this program. International medical graduates can apply online to have their educational and training credentials verified while still in their country of origin.
Despite the progress of all governments, barriers to effective labour market integration for foreign-trained health professionals remain. Successful labour market integration requires that Canada has the right processes, information and resources in place to recognize the knowledge, skills and experience of immigrants.
In response, on January 16, 2009, first ministers directed the federal-provincial-territorial forum of labour market ministers to take concerted action to ensure that the assessment and recognition of foreign qualifications is consistent, timely, fair, and transparent across Canada.
By September 2009 labour market ministers will develop a principles-based pan-Canadian framework for foreign qualification assessment and recognition, along with an implementation plan to put the framework into effect.
First ministers have agreed to complete this work under aggressive timelines so as to ensure that initial subset of priority regulated occupations is achieving service standards by 2010. Where appropriate and practical, these service standards will enable the assessment of international qualifications to be completed within at least one year of the applicant's seeking licensure or registration.
The phased implementation plan will be guided by an agreed-to set of priority occupations. Health occupations are expected to be heavily represented amongst these priority occupations.
In closing, I would like to recognize the department's efforts to create an integrated system of fair and objective assessment processes and to increase consistency between jurisdictions with respect to recognition and registration processes for internationally trained professionals while also improving labour mobility across Canada.
Thank you, Madam Chair.