Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee.
I have been the director of the school of midwifery at Laurentian University for 20 years, and now, after a total of 22 years, the insolvency situation has caused me to be retired. I would like to focus on the role that the midwifery program has played in capacity building and then make some recommendations for going forward.
The first area is health human resources. The majority of current midwifery practices in northern Ontario did not exist before the midwifery program began. As noted in the first session, 60% of the midwives practising in these areas are graduates of the Laurentian program. Many students enter the program with the goal of joining existing northern practices or setting up new ones. For example, Mélanie Guérin entered the program in 1999, and in response to a question about setting up a practice in her home community of Hearst, a southern site director answered her, "There will never be practices in small communities like Hearst." This motivated Mélanie to spend every visit home networking with community members, and in 2005, she set up her practice.
Many northern communities still have no midwifery and, indeed, no maternity services. There are many professional provincial and federal actions that will be needed to realize the dream that every pregnant person should be able to birth close to home. These include new funding models, transportation issues, clean water and the improvement of Internet connections. A school of midwifery in a northern university is a very useful strategy for informing the population about midwifery and about choices that can be made related to childbirth, childbearing and other health situations.
One example of something that we created is a pelvic teaching program developed in 2002 to train midwifery, medical and nurse practitioner students, and hospital sexual assault nurses in sensitive, respectful and informative pelvic examinations, including pap smears. This program may be lost with the closure of the school, to the detriment of northern residents.
My next area is accessibility to education. Many of the northern students and graduates of the Laurentian program tell us that they would not a have done a degree in midwifery if they could not have remained in the north. Attention to the demographics of our applicant pool has lead us to accept direct from high school applicants every year, which helps to retain students.
The CNFS has assisted us with some resources for recruitment and scholarships for the program. The CNFS model is one that might be used for other aspects of a northern site for midwifery education.
My final area of capacity building is scholarship and research. Social science and humanities research about midwifery is common. There is a beginning collection of research by midwives to inform practice, but for the most part, this is not northern oriented. Midwifery is a nearly invisible research profession, not included in lists of professions within granting agencies or calls for proposals and research teams. Federal funding for midwives to conduct research in low income countries is available through the Canadian Association of Midwives, but similar opportunities for research in Canada's north are far less accessible.
My recommendations are, first, include health services in the responsibilities of FedNor. This may provide support for communities that can grow their economic picture when health services needed by residents of childbearing age are available locally. Second, build on the CNFS model to create federally supported but locally driven programs to address the needs of northern, indigenous, francophone, anglophone and racialized students. Third, support the development of a northern midwifery research institute. Possibly, this could be in conjunction with the Centre for Rural and Northern Health Research at Laurentian and Lakehead Universities.
Fourth, support the reintroduction of a school of midwifery in northern Ontario. This continues to need to support the educational and practice needs of northern, indigenous, racialized, francophone and anglophone populations. Fifth, and perhaps for the federal government most important, establish an office of midwifery within the federal government to coordinate and liaise with other departments and professions on questions related to the profession and health issues related to reproductive and sexual health.
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.