Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Members, my name is Andrew Padmos. I'm the CEO of the Royal College and have been that for five years. I'm accompanied by Paul Tomascik, a senior policy analyst with us. I'm a physician by training, a hematologist. I practised mostly outside Canada, in Saudi Arabia, but since I returned in 1993, I've practised in Kingston, Halifax, and I currently continue a clinic in Windsor, Nova Scotia, the home of hockey.
Thank you Mr. Cuzner.
The Royal College feels there is a simple solution that's within reach to shorten the foreign credentials recognition process and to integrate internationally trained physicians into Canadian practice. However, we feel it's important to pause and reflect on the very high standards for which Canada's health system is very well recognized. It's not that we're an organization with a defined self-interest in the profession. The Royal College was created in 1929 to provide the public with assurance that physician specialists--in those days there were only two specialties, physicians and surgeons--were trained to the highest quality so that public confidence could be maintained.
In fact, our organization welcomes the additional physician manpower that would be available through faster immigration processes, and we're taking steps to improve the integration of internationally trained physicians already in Canada. Approximately 1,500 are practising as specialists in Canada but have not yet achieved Royal College certification, which is acknowledged both inside Canada and outside as the gold standard for recognition and registration of specialists' qualifications.
Our standards are sometimes referred to as CanMEDS, Canadian medical education standards for specialists. They've been adopted in 20 countries and jurisdictions around the world because of their value in setting a framework for medical education and training.
We actually have only four recommendations for consideration here, and I don't think this is the first time they've been presented to standing committees of health and human resources here in Ottawa.
First, we recommend that action be taken to reduce and eliminate confusing standards and information present in various websites, both from the point of view of Canadian immigration and from the registration of the medical regulatory authorities in Canada's ten provinces and three territories. Those who are seeking to enter Canada for a variety of reasons deserve a single source of truth in terms of the information about requirements and the process.
Second, a recommendation is that as much as possible there be harmonization of Canada's immigration requirements and process for those individuals who seek advantage in the immigration process by virtue of their medical qualifications. So if they get additional points because they are a physician, we think they should be subject to additional stipulations. There are only really three. First, language proficiency should be established before the immigration process is completed. Second, their primary qualifications of their medical degrees and other specialist certification should be registered with Canada's physician credentials registry, located and supported by the Medical Council of Canada. It provides a one-stop shop for verification of credentials, and it applies to those in Canada, trained in Canada, as well as those outside. Third, all candidates for immigration who anticipate a medical career should do the evaluating examination of the Medical Council of Canada before their immigration process is completed. This is because that's the base qualification required for all medical graduates practising in Canada.
If members of the federal government would like to turbocharge the process, they should consider an additional recommendation, and that is to provide funding for clinical observation periods for those physicians who are trained outside and have qualifications that might warrant them getting a licence to practise. However, we do not support point-of-time evaluation.
We think that in most cases a period of observation of three to six months is necessary, and it is often required by provincial regulators. However, the funding to make this possible for candidates is often sparse and very difficult to process. So additional funding in this area would greatly speed up dealing with a pool of probably 3,000 physicians who are already landed permanent residents of Canada, and sometimes citizens, who have not yet been able to achieve licensure.
Thank you.