Thank you for the question.
I think there are two aspects to what you're asking.
One is the training opportunities for Canadian-trained medical students to enter the residency training process that's required to become a practising physician in Canada. Again, this is part of the issue with not having a national integrated workforce plan. There isn't necessarily coordination of the number of spots available in medical school relative to the number of post-medical school training opportunities. That mismatch does create...some people who have trained to be physicians, but then aren't able to access that next step of training to allow them to actually practise. That, again, needs to be part of a plan, and we believe a national lens on that would be helpful.
The other piece I think you're talking about is the regulatory structural barriers for international medical trainees who are physicians from other countries, who are entering Canada and unable to work. Again, there are really two issues there. The first is the cost involved in accessing a Canadian licence, the training and apprenticeship process that foreign-trained physicians often need to access to be qualified here. That is very challenging. The second is that it's very cost prohibitive, and there are lots of barriers in terms of allowing people to access that system. there is, again, the fact that because this is regulated by the provinces and territories, the approach to credentialling and what's required to obtain the licence is different in every province and territory. Again, there's no singular structure, and that creates a lot of unnecessary challenges and barriers at the regulatory level.
I think the opportunity for the federal government would be to provide that support, whether it's through bursaries or other monetary supports, to allow foreign-trained physicians that training and the financial support needed to be able to access it. It's upscaling the availability of those opportunities, and it's creating a pan-Canadian approach to credentialing and what those requirements are for Canadian licensure so we're not having these individual provinces and territories creating regulatory barriers for foreign-trained providers.