Mr. Karygiannis, the federal role is to fund organizations, including national associations of regulatory bodies, to build assessment tools to ensure that their processes for obtaining licensure are as fair and transparent as possible for foreign-trained, as well as for Canadian-trained, individuals. Once an individual in a licensed occupation becomes a practising member of that occupation, as you well know, they obtain a licence and they then have to pay licensing fees to maintain that licence. With that right comes the right to vote within the occupation, but in an area of foreign credential recognition that is, as we've said in our opening statement, the purview of the provinces and territories, I don't think the federal government has the right to insist that either domestically trained or foreign-trained licensed individuals in any occupation must vote in one way or the other.
On October 27th, 2009. See this statement in context.