Thanks very much for inviting me to speak today.
I was nervous enough, and then I saw that with Speech-Language and Audiology in the room, I need to speak as clearly as I can.
First of all, I want to say I'm grateful to be presenting here today and to contribute to this very important work as we look at Canada's health care resources. It has never been as clear that health care is important as it has been the last two years as we dealt with a worldwide pandemic.
In Nova Scotia we did our best to deal with the pandemic, and we saw an upsurge in our use of telehealth, so we were able to use Zoom technology to see patients in rural and remote areas. We're fortunate in that psychiatry and mental health are particularly well suited to this technology, and it did help us see patients in remote areas on an urgent basis who would not otherwise have been seen.
This brought to light the need for improved access to broadband Internet in rural areas, and if the federal government were to support that, it would be helpful. Also, if we were to support rural hospitals in communities to have improved technology to access those services, that would be very helpful.
Even though telehealth is a burgeoning field, it's not the same as in-person sessions, so we still need boots on the ground.
Today I would like to mention the importance of the recruitment and retention of health care workers to Canada, especially rural areas. My experience is with physicians, but I believe my comments would apply to other health care workers as well.
Essentially we're trying to get doctors to come to a rural areas, to stay, and then to be happy that they stayed. Part of the process of getting doctors to come to rural areas is training doctors at home, and we're doing good work in our medical schools across the country to try to find doctors well suited to rural practice and help them tailor their studies to best allow them to do that. We also bring in doctors from overseas, and I wish to speak today to the importance of streamlined immigration.
We have had a number of doctors agree to come to rural Nova Scotia whose arrival here was delayed considerably by challenges with the immigration process. One of the things that came up during the pandemic especially was that we had an inability to effectively communicate with Immigration Canada to troubleshoot some of these problems, resulting in one physician arriving in Canada three weeks before his family, who had to pay for a hotel in London, England for three weeks while waiting for things to get sorted out.
If we were able to have a streamlined process for immigration and then improve communication between the federal department of immigration and our provincial health authorities, that would be helpful.
The federal government has been doing work to promote national licensure for physicians. This is also helpful with portability in helping rural areas reach out to locums when in need. Aligned with that would be a federal locum program where we can, again, access help for doctors in rural areas.
There are doctors who are challenged by the idea of coming to a rural area because they are, frankly, afraid that they won't be able to leave and that they won't be able to get a break, so a federal locum program would assist those doctors in knowing they would get time off when they so much need it.
When doctors come to a rural area, we need to do everything we can to support them in their careers, which means giving them fulfilling work, offering them the opportunity to have a good work-life balance as well as the opportunity to continue to have their continuing education, whether it be by Zoom in their local clinics or getting away to attend a conference. Support we can give in this area would also be quite helpful.
Another thing that would be helpful is also recognizing the importance of having health care workers who decide to come to a community and stay for the long term, so coming up with incentives for longer-term service, I think, is very important.
One idea that I have pitched locally is the idea of a five-year bursary bonus, where any doctor or health care worker who comes to a rural area and stays five years after buying a house in the community would get a bursary paid out gradually over the following five years to encourage them to stay a longer time.
Finally, I would like to speak to the importance of fostering nationwide positive workplace cultures. If we can create positive, healthy workplaces that are culturally safe, welcoming and inclusive, that would be one of the best ways to encourage our health care workers to choose to live in rural areas and also stay.
I know I'm on a timeline here. I know the committee's time is precious, so I will conclude my comments there and thank you for your time.