Evidence of meeting #10 for Health in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was working.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Marcus Powlowski Liberal Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON
Is it your impression, as somebody who works in chronic care, that there are large numbers of recent immigrants taking up chronic care beds?
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association for Long Term Care
Not that I am aware of.
Liberal
Marcus Powlowski Liberal Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON
On the other hand—and we have been fighting this battle—I would suggest that in terms of pros and cons of the effects of immigration on the health care system, we overwhelmingly benefit from the immigrants in the health care system. Certainly PSWs are a great example of it.
Can you tell me what percentage of PSWs currently working in Canada were actually born in Canada?
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association for Long Term Care
Again, that is part of the data challenge we have. There is work being done by the Canadian Institute for Health Information and by Health Workforce Canada to better understand the long-term care workforce, including the personal support workers. Information has been fairly limited for that particular cohort, as it's a largely unregulated group of the long-term care workforce.
Liberal
Marcus Powlowski Liberal Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON
I think anyone who has relatives in long-term care or who has been in a long-term care home recently would tell you—and I would think you could say, without knowing the exact numbers—that there is a large number of people working in chronic care, PSWs, who were not born in Canada. I know you don't have the exact numbers.
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association for Long Term Care
Yes, certainly there is a presence of individuals who are newcomers to Canada working in those roles.
Liberal
Marcus Powlowski Liberal Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON
Do you have any numbers as to people who are temporary foreign workers currently working in chronic care homes?
You mentioned that 40% of all temporary foreign workers in Canada are employed in chronic care. Is this true?
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association for Long Term Care
That was a number that was produced in a recent report from Statistics Canada. We can also see that between 2010 and 2019, more than half of the temporary foreign workers who came and worked in health care were still working in the sector after five years. It is a successful program.
Liberal
Marcus Powlowski Liberal Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON
You mentioned that recent changes in IRCC having to do with LMIA on a yearly basis are creating significant problems in chronic care homes. Can you elaborate a bit on that? Is this, at the moment, adversely affecting patient care?
My colleague, Luc Thériault, talked about the pressure on existing health care workers. Have the changes that make it harder for people to come in as temporary foreign workers created a problem?
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association for Long Term Care
I think the challenge is the administrative burden that is generated from that. Often, homes need to seek support to complete that when they have a number of temporary foreign workers in the home. Of course, there's a cost associated with that.
A backlog with processing much of that information is being reported. Those collectively create a challenge.
Liberal
Marcus Powlowski Liberal Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON
Would you be in favour of issuing an automatic two-year renewal for anybody who currently has a work permit and is working as a PSW in chronic care homes? The government could do this. That would be a fairly quick and efficient way of ensuring that people who are already here and are needed in the system stay in the system.
Would you be in favour of that?
Liberal
Marcus Powlowski Liberal Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON
You could send this, because I'm sure we're running out of time. You talked about problems with the economic mobility pathway. Briefly, could you expand on that? If there are refugees here who could work in the system, that would certainly seem to me to be desirable. If you could send us stuff on that, we'd appreciate it. Thanks.
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association for Long Term Care
Certainly. Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
I will now go to Mr. Thériault.
Mr. Thériault, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.
Bloc
Luc Thériault Bloc Montcalm, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. Hall, several witnesses told us that for internationally trained professionals, there is a problem with matching up the requirements between Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and the criteria that must be met from one profession to the next.
To solve this problem, some suggested setting up a guidance process to help navigate the rules, so that these people can exercise their profession.
They also said the rules contain inconsistencies.
What do you propose to solve these problems?
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association for Long Term Care
As we consider labour mobility across the country, I think considering foreign credential recognition as part of that would be largely beneficial. Having a greater, standardized approach to licensure and the recognition of credentials would be very beneficial for the workforce, I think.
Bloc
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association for Long Term Care
Right now, each jurisdiction across the country has a different approach to licensure. A tremendous amount of work has been done to try to streamline those processes, but I think many continue to advocate for further enhancement of that, so we can see greater consistency, especially regarding foreign credential recognition, where basically we could be asking the same things of newcomers to Canada in each of the provinces and territories.
Bloc
Luc Thériault Bloc Montcalm, QC
When it comes to low retention capacity, what are the most common causes?
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association for Long Term Care
I think there are a number of challenges. One is that with our population aging, so is our workforce, and we do see our workforce getting closer to retirement age. That has already started. I think that is a current factor. There is also significant competition across the health care sector for the same group of employees, so a number of factors come into play with wages and working conditions, and long-term care homes work to be as competitive as possible in those areas.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you very much. I think we were over time there.
I would like to go now to Ms. Konanz for five minutes, please.
Conservative
Helena Konanz Conservative Similkameen—South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
I have a couple more questions for Mayor Johansen. We talked a bit about the difficulty of retention of doctors and nurses. South Okanagan General Hospital is not the only hospital in Canada facing multiple sudden closures. We're not even sure of the effects of it—how many people are incapacitated, or might even die, because their hospital is not open.
How difficult would you rate the challenge of recruiting doctors, nurses and other specialists to work in rural hospitals or clinics like the South Okanagan General Hospital, and why?
Mayor, Town of Oliver
Would you like a rating on a scale of one to 10, that type of thing?