Health care training is very expensive. What are the challenges? The greatest challenge is recruitment and making sure the students succeed. Remote areas are undergoing a decrease in population. We often carry out recruitment activities, and the CNFS consortium is trying to find ways to increase the number of students.
Graduates of immersion programs and francophone immigrants are an absolutely incredible source of students, despite the accommodations that must be made. Immersion students and francophone immigrants, most of whom are first generation immigrants, must be integrated successfully into the workplace.
Allow me to share a brief anecdote. We offer a practical nursing program. In our long-term care centre based here in Ottawa, we noticed that our interns were leaving the program. In theory, they were doing very well, but they were dropping out of their placements. We met with people from the health centre and we found that clients aged 80, 82 or 85 were very aggressive and negative because they did not wish to be cared for by a non-white student. Those senior citizens were extremely harsh towards our female students.
It is very difficult to change an 80, 85, or 90-year-old. We then decided to organize many work sessions with our own students to teach them how to deal with this very specific situation and how to change it. After the workshops were held, we noticed an incredible increase in the success rate. The female students remained in the program. This proves that in dealing with different students, particularly new immigrants or first generation people, programs must be adapted if we want to succeed.
Another challenge is that of obtaining health care professionals in our regions. I already spoke about this and will not repeat myself.
Recruitment can often be difficult, particularly in a context where the health care profession is viewed negatively, and is seen as one that is not easy. In addition, students are very much attracted to English-speaking institutions, because they are bigger and well known, and often they end up working in English rather than in French. This is a challenge facing all the institutions in the consortium.
Another huge challenge is serving remote regions by means of e-learning and distance learning. E-learning is very expensive and is not easy; it must be done properly. In addition, health care training requires one-on-one meetings. Techniques can be taught, but attitudes must also be taught, which is not an easy thing to do from afar.
Recruitment of specialized professionals also is another challenge. People are under the assumption that the Cité collégiale hires frequently because they're constantly running across our ads in the newspapers. Sometimes we have to run an ad for a position four times before hiring someone; we have discovered that we have to actively recruit. This is a challenge for the entire consortium.
It is also difficult to find placements for students.This must be negotiated. Earlier, I showed you the long list of partnerships for a single institution. This involves to meetings with care centres and hospitals to discuss practicum programs and so on.
I will not reiterate my comments on the very high cost of equipment. You are very familiar with the other challenges: the lack of pedagogical material, working in a setting that is changing at an incredible rate, and lastly the fact that health care comes under provincial jurisdiction.
For the Cité collégiale, the consortium has been a huge success. Why? Because we have seen that there is now greater access for our communities. Enrolment in the programs and the number of graduates have increased.
I took the liberty of focusing on the impact in the workplace. People from Saint-Boniface Hospital told me that when they began receiving French-speaking students, they discovered that some of their regular employees who never spoke French at work, were in fact francophones. They also discovered that there were anglophones who knew French. These placements had an impact on the hospital, on its ability and willingness to provide services in French. This is an outcome that cannot be easily quantified.
I talked about creating a synergy with teaching institutions, colleges and universities and with the community. With regard to developing national projects, I gave you the example of immigrants, first generation professionals. Instead of having ten projects throughout Canada, we wondered how we could develop best practices to ensure the integration, success and recruiting of our immigrants and newcomers.
The benefits are obviously the increased creation and development of programs and cooperation among the partners.
In conclusion, I want to make two points. Often, people wonder why the federal government supports one project at a time in health and education, which are two areas under provincial jurisdiction. What is it doing in these areas?
It is absolutely essential that this support be continued when it's a matter of francophones living in a minority situation. You know that there will be new discussions or negotiations on a phase 3 for 2008-2013. Not only must we support francophones, but we must absolutely ensure that this support is increased. In fact, the Canadian cooperation that has allowed interprovincial exchanges is not something that naturally occurs in areas under provincial jurisdiction. This is not done. This is not something that is necessarily considered as desirable.
Mr. Chairman, I apologize for taking so much time.