Thank you, Madam Chair.
Good morning, members of the committee.
Thank you for inviting me today, and thank you for the important work you are doing as a committee.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak as part of the study on the international accreditation of internationally trained health professionals and their integration into the Canadian health care system.
Canada's strength comes from its people, and our health is the cornerstone of our success. Across the country, our health care system continues to face unprecedented workforce pressures. While the supply of health professionals is growing, demand is rising even faster. Many internationally educated health professionals want to contribute their skills, but they face lengthy, costly and complicated credential recognition processes. About one-third of internationally educated health professionals in Canada are employed outside their field.
This represents both a workforce challenge and a missed opportunity to strengthen Canadians' access to health care. It's also a call to action for all levels of government. Together, we can do more to help foreign-trained professionals put their skills to work for Canada more quickly and effectively. Our government is taking action on that.
In the recently tabled budget 2025, we announced the creation of the foreign credential recognition action fund, to which we will allocate $97 million over five years, starting in 2026-27. This fund will aim to help skilled immigrants get their professional credentials recognized more quickly, particularly in high-demand sectors such as health care and construction. This is done in collaboration with the provinces and territories. The goal is to unlock the economic potential of immigrants by reducing the understaffing caused by barriers to credential recognition.
This is work the federal government must do in partnership.
I recently met with my provincial and territorial counterparts at the health ministers' meeting, where we discussed our efforts to remove barriers and help more internationally educated health professionals join the workforce. Provinces and territories have also been working to develop innovative models for foreign credential recognition processes in their own jurisdictions, and we are seeing good results across the country.
The federal government is currently signing agreements with colleges for internationally educated health professional projects. Alberta has been seeing many new foreign-trained doctors joining their workforce. B.C. is now streamlining doctors and nurses from the U.S. Ontario also has also a similar program. I could give many other examples of what we can do when we come together as a country.
Throughout our history, we have opened our doors to people from abroad.