Thank you, Madam Chair.
My name is Corinne Prince St-Amand and I am Executive Director of the Foreign Credentials Referral Office at Citizenship and Immigration Canada.
I want to thank the Committee for this opportunity to provide an overview of CIC's role in health human resources. Today I will focus primarily on the accreditation of foreign trained professionals.
CIC is involved in health human resources in a number of ways, from the selection of immigrants to their overall integration into society to helping internationally trained individuals get their credentials recognized.
I will focus this afternoon on the theme of your study as it relates to the accreditation of health professionals.
I think we all recognize that immigration has been and continues to be vital to Canada's growth and economic strength. However, recognizing the foreign credentials of internationally trained individuals continues to be a challenge across the country.
In Canada, the provinces and territories are responsible for assessing and recognizing credentials. The system involves many jurisdictions and stakeholders, including five provincial assessment agencies, over 200 post-secondary educational institutions, and more than 440 regulatory bodies.
In fact, over 53 provincial and territorial ministries are involved in this issue, and the issue spans immigration, labour market, health, and education ministries. There are literally thousands of players on this file when you include employers who are also important assessors of credentials and work experience in non-regulated occupations.
The federal government has an important role to play, which complements and supports the provincial and territorial roles, and that is to ensure that newcomers are able to put their talents, skills, and resources to work once they arrive in Canada.
To that end, in May 2007, the Government of Canada established the Foreign Credentials Referral Office to help internationally trained and educated individuals find authoritative and accurate information about the Canadian labour market and Canada's credential assessment and recognition processes.
The Foreign Credentials Referral Office provides a coordinated focus at the federal level to work with the provinces, with the regulatory bodies, and with employers to coordinate federal-provincial efforts, to share best practices across the country and across the myriad of players that I've mentioned, and to try to avoid overlap and duplication on an issue that is extremely complex.
Since it was launched in 2007, in-person services are now available across the country through 330 Service Canada centres. We have helped 46,000 people to date get the information they need. Our website has received over 550,000 visits, the majority from overseas, so people are starting to get the information they need before they arrive in Canada.
Prior to the establishment of the Foreign Credentials Referral Office at Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Human Resources and Skills Development Canada laid the foundation for consistent foreign credential referral processes by developing partnerships with provinces, territories, and other stakeholders. They also established an overseas platform as a pilot, to give skilled immigrants the information they need to start preparing to enter the Canadian labour market.
Our two departments will continue to work together as the Foreign Credentials Referral Office assumes responsibility for the overseas platform in the near future.
Provincial, territorial, and municipal governments also offer services to newcomers in many ways, including through the “Going to Canada” immigration portal. This tool helps prospective immigrants access in one place the services and information they need and reduces the requirement to navigate through a series of websites.
The Prime Minister, provincial premiers and territorial leaders recognize the importance of foreign qualification recognition to the economic health of the country. They have tasked the Forum of Labour Market Ministries, with the support of Immigration Ministries, to develop a pan-Canadian framework by September of this year.
To support the efforts from the first ministers, the Foreign Credentials Referral Office received additional funding in budget 2009, some $13.7 million over two years, to contribute to the development of a pan-Canadian qualifications framework by harmonizing standards and clearing pathways to foreign qualification recognition for high-priority, regulated occupations. Many, we expect, will be in the health field, beginning overseas.
The sooner prospective immigrants know the steps they need to take, the sooner Canada can benefit from their contribution to society and our economy. To address the physician shortage across the country, some progress has been made in several provinces by way of ensuring internationally trained medical graduates receive the certification they need to practise in Canada. For example, in 2008, more doctors were licensed than ever before in Ontario, with the number of foreign-trained physicians reaching a record high as well. Compared to 2007, this represents a 43% increase in the number of internationally trained medical graduates who have been licensed. Since 2004, statistics have shown a steady increase year after year in the number of licences awarded to such professionals in Ontario. In Alberta, 40% of doctors licensed in 2008 were internationally trained medical graduates, which is also the highest percentage ever for that province.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I hope this has provided you with an overview of CIC's role in health human resources.