Official Languages Committee on Oct. 24th, 2006

[Vivian Barbot, Bloc, Papineau, QC]

Good morning and thank you for being here today.

You spoke about how the federal government has crossed into two areas of provincial jurisdiction. You also spoke about difficulties relating to the transferability of training from one province to another, etc.

A problem faced by Quebec is that students from Gatineau tend to study in Ontario because the training is shorter. This creates the opposite problem whereby they are unable to work in Quebec because their training is not recognized. This means that we lose these students.

Given that your mandate is to train professionals living outside of Quebec, I would like to know what you are doing to resolve this problem.

[Andrée Lortie]

Quebec students are not eligible to participate in the consortium's program. In order to be eligible, students must come from a province or territory other than Quebec. Quebec students are not eligible for the program that we are discussing this morning.

That said, your question is very pertinent in the context of non-CNFS programs.

[Vivian Barbot, Bloc, Papineau, QC]

To which programs are you referring?

[Andrée Lortie]

Consortium students have reserved spots on existing province funding programs, such as auxiliary nursing, etc. Funding such programs is a matter of provincial responsibility.

The creation of the consortium brought about an increase in the number of places available. For example, if the province funds 30 students in auxiliary nursing, the consortium can fund an additional 10. These 10 additional students would otherwise not have been accepted or funded through the consortium.

[Vivian Barbot, Bloc, Papineau, QC]

So it complements an already existing program?

[Andrée Lortie]

Exactly, it allows us to increase the number of trained professionals.

[Vivian Barbot, Bloc, Papineau, QC]

Could you tell us how many students are involved with the consortium?

[Andrée Lortie]

We have had 410 additional registrations so far.

[Linda Cloutier]

We have 110 graduates, and our overall target for phase 2 was 686 new admissions.

[Andrée Lortie]

Those figures are for one institution, there are nine others. The number would be even higher were we to take all of the institutions into consideration.

[The Chair, Conservative, Guy Lauzon]

Thank you, Ms. Barbot.

Mr. Godin.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Your presentation was so good that there are hardly any questions left to ask.

Did you say that you had accepted 16,000 students since 1990?

[Andrée Lortie]

The Cité Collégiale welcomes around 16,000 students a year.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

How many people have you refused?

Ottawa and Sudbury are the only two places offering training in French in Ontario. As it happens, one of my daughters studied at Sudbury and she enjoyed her training. However, I know that there are people who want to attend college, but who are turned down due to a shortage of places.

[Andrée Lortie]

It is difficult to give an exact answer to your question, but perhaps Linda will be able to help.

[Linda Cloutier]

All I would say is that, like English-language institutions, the Cité Collégiale has established entrance criteria for its programs. Some students are not accepted into courses because they do not have the required credits.

In an attempt to remedy this, the Cité Collégiale offers a health specific pre-science program. It is a one-year skills upgrading program that allows students who were not accepted directly into their program of choice to gain health specific pre-science credits so that they can then be accepted to the program.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

I do not fully agree with you. In New Brunswick, some students are not accepted simply because others have better grades. That does not mean that they would not be accepted if more places were available.

I recall the case of a student who had completed two years of the nursing program before leaving for personal reasons. When she tried to go back to her studies she was turned down. The problem was a shortage of available spaces, not whether or not she was qualified.

[Andrée Lortie]

You are right that some health programs have quotas and that we can only accept a certain number of students. That is the case for dental hygiene for example. At the Cité collégiale, we can only accept about 60 students into the program. But that was not the case in the past. Before the consortium was created, the Ontario government limited our enrolment to 30. The consortium approached the Ontario government and told it that the number of students needed to be increased because waiting lists were very long.

So we were authorized to increase our enrolment in this program. We also received an increase because it was in French. Often, the profession sets quotas to limit enrolment. You are right in that it's an issue. There is also an issue of space and spots linked to institution funding.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Do immigrants who are accepted in college, for example, receive credits for the training they received at home? All too often, when you take a taxi, you meet a driver who says he has a diploma in such and such a profession, but that he cannot be accredited.

What are we doing to help these people get accredited in health care, for example, since we are facing a shortage of qualified workers in this field?

[Andrée Lortie]

That is a big challenge for us. At present, some programs exist. Last year, for example, we offered a program for nurses.

[Linda Cloutier]

In fact, the program was specifically for nurses who arrived in Canada and who had received their training abroad. They had passed the exam, but they were having trouble finding a job. In many cases, we realized that the immigrants did not have a problem with respect to knowledge, but rather with respect to their cultural knowledge of Canada, in other words, ways of doing things, what is accepted, and what is not.

The Cité collégiale has offered a program for foreign-trained nurses on two occasions.

[Andrée Lortie]

But it is not enough.

[The Chair, Conservative, Guy Lauzon]

Thank you very much.

We are sorry, but the time allotted is up.

Mr. Lemieux, you may ask the next question.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Good morning, thank you for your excellent presentation.

As you know, last summer, I had the honour of attending your graduation ceremony. I was truly impressed by the number of programs you offer as well as by your students' motivation. I also congratulate you because you have increased the number of programs and students, and you have extended your services.

You have a campus in Hawkesbury, my home town. There is something that worries me. If students in Hawkesbury want to take courses at the Cité collégiale, they must travel to Ottawa, to your main campus, or else move to Ottawa. It is quite a distance, and as a result most students move to take their courses. But after they graduate, these students stay in Ottawa and find jobs there.

Do you intend to offer more programs at the Hawkesbury campus, to try and resolve this issue?

[Andrée Lortie]

You have touched on a problem that is not limited to the Cité collégiale; it exists almost everywhere. Often, for post-secondary programs—you have had a glimpse of the type of equipment required—we really cannot afford for the very hands-on components, to offer this kind of program in several places, because it is so costly. We are a college. For a medical school in a university, you can imagine that the problem would be even more serious.

Through the Consortium national de formation en santé, and certainly the Cité collégiale, we try to meet needs, mainly those of adults, by providing more distance learning, e-learning and by trying to provide certain courses in regions for adults who have children and who are unable to travel. Often, young people leaving high school know that they will have to move, but at the Hawkesbury Hospital, they will try to organize themselves so that—