Thank you for your question Mr. Murphy. First, the Université de Moncton is an integral part, as you know, of the Consortium national de formation en santé, the CNFS. The university's president, Yvon Fontaine, is the other co-chair of the consortium.
We work closely together. I am also aware of the Acadie-Sherbrooke program for training doctors. This program works quite well and will be set up in Moncton, as you just said.
The challenge you are talking about, and your two questions, concern the needs of the other provinces, and the students' return to their home province once they have received their education. These are the two main directions of the CNFS, the purpose of the CNFS, and why the federal government is involved in this type of project.
For example, every year as part of Phase II of the CNFS, the University of Ottawa trains eight doctors to serve Francophone minority regions. We are trying to train students from Saskatchewan, British Columbia, Alberta and even New Brunswick—students from across Canada.
As far as your question on the need for doctors elsewhere in the country is concerned, I would say that indeed this need exists. This need is filled for the most part by the University of Ottawa, which trains doctors not only for Ontario, but for all the Francophone minority communities.
As for how we will make sure these students return to the communities, I would say that in all our health training programs, the key aspect is ensuring that the clinical placements are done in the home regions of both nurses and doctors.
Doctors have what we call 13 weeks of rotations. Students take specialized training at a hospital. Yes, we do a lot of work with the Montfort hospital, which is how the CNFS was created in the first place, as you well know. We also serve the receiving areas and the hospital areas in the regions. We send students back to the hospitals and the local health community centres to make sure they go home. When students go back home they are offered attractive jobs outside major urban centres. Ensuring that every student does a placement in their home region is part of our report, of our formative evaluation. There are no guarantees, but more students go back to their home region this way. When we work with CNFS students, we notify the University of Ottawa. We try to instill this culture in them, a sense of moral obligation to go home and serve their community.