Mr. Speaker, I will start my comments today by observing that the motion itself is a little light on detail. My colleague from Burnaby—Douglas proposed an amendment that would have added some weight to the motion and would have helped in terms of the debate. I will come back to what his proposition was, which sadly was not adopted. I will take a look at where we are with immigration and settlement in Canada.
My riding of Ottawa Centre is very diverse. In fact, it is one of the most diverse ridings in the entire country. I am very proud of the fact that my riding is a reflection of what the whole country is about.
One of the things that is critical is the support offered to new Canadians and immigrants by many of the community institutions that have been built over many years. Before being elected as a member of Parliament, I had the honour to be on the board of one of those agencies, OCISO, the Ottawa Community Immigrant Services Organization. What it does is very similar to what other organizations across the country do which is to help serve immigrants and new Canadians when they arrive in Canada.
Having been on the board, I can say it is just stunning the amount of work that is done by organizations like OCISO, the Catholic Immigration Centre here in Ottawa, the Jewish Family Services of Ottawa, and many others as well. I am sure every member of Parliament can attest to organizations like those that do extremely good work on behalf of all of us but in particular help immigrants and new Canadians.
A problem I observed as a board member with OCISO is that those organizations are often taken for granted by government. It is very difficult for them to get adequate funding, funding that is going to be there for them and for the people they serve on a regular basis. Often they are nickeled and dimed to the point of utter frustration by yearly audits, when in fact, they are doing their jobs. Service organizations like OCISO, the Catholic Immigration Centre and the Jewish Family Services are among the most accountable operations to be found in the country. Yet, when we should be funding organizations like those, too often the case is that we do not.
Those organizations welcome people upon their arrival in Canada. They are the ones who take care of people's basic needs to ensure that there is adequate and appropriate language training, to make sure that they are welcomed into our wider communities, and to make sure that they have the services they require. For example, recently, refugees who had been in Thai camps for decades arrived here in Ottawa. The people who helped serve them were from some of the agencies I mentioned.
Instead of making sure that the organizations have adequate funding, often they have to go cap in hand to government every year. One of the things we could do is to make sure that there is stable funding for these organizations, to make sure that they will not have to worry about whether or not they can provide the services on a regular basis. To be quite honest about it, we are using these organizations and the people who work for them in a way that we would not put up with if it was our own family. These people are dedicated. They are doing the heavy lifting and they are the kind of people we need to support.
While we have not done it in the past, we should be providing stable funding for service organizations like OCISO, the Catholic Immigration Centre and Jewish Family Services. They are the ones who understand the issues. They are on the ground. They are the grassroots. They are the ones who do the work that is so important in terms of integration and settlement.
Many people who come to Canada have issues around foreign credentials recognition but also about entering our labour market. Just before the holiday break, I held three town halls on this issue. One town hall was with foreign trained doctors, one was with foreign trained engineers, and one was with an amalgam of different professionals. They are having problems having their foreign credentials recognized but also, once their foreign credentials are recognized, they are having problems finding employment.
Before I was elected to Parliament, I had the opportunity to work with teachers who were looking to have their foreign credentials recognized. We were able to get foreign credentials recognition for over 100 teachers fast-tracked because we worked with some of the service organizations that are working with new Canadians. The Ontario College of Teachers and the professional institutions were key here. They need to be brought into the equation and also the universities. In this case it was Queen's University. We were able to fast-track the foreign credentials recognition for these teachers.
One of the problems is what happens after that process, that is, in getting employment after obtaining recognition for foreign credentials.
We had thought that about 10 to 15 doctors would attend the town hall, but there were over 40. What I did not know until that point is how many foreign trained doctors are right here in Ottawa. There are 500. There are approximately 5,000 in the province. This is unbelievable. There is an obvious gap in our system. People who hail from this community know there is a shortage of doctors, not just in the rural areas, but right here in Ottawa. Yet, there are doctors right here in our community and the only barriers are the bureaucratic barriers that we have put in place. There are solutions. I hope the government will listen to the people who came to the town hall meeting and to the suggestions I will be putting forward in a report.
In the area of medicine we can change the situation by looking at what other jurisdictions have done. Other jurisdictions have fast-tracked those who have foreign credentials in the medical profession from another country. Other jurisdictions have made sure that there are not barriers like security clearances, which we have put in place. There are no barriers like having to go through the whole process of re-certification, in essence having to be re-educated.
In other jurisdictions doctors work with other doctors similar to an apprenticeship. They are not tested right at the beginning. They are allowed to integrate into the communities to understand the medical system. This has been done in France and in California. After they have had a certain period of time to understand the medical system, their performance is assessed. Where there are gaps, for instance, if pharmacology is different, they fill the gap. France has been doing this for over a decade. California has been doing it for quite a while.
The people who have gone through these scenarios have the solutions. We know what the problems are, but they have the solutions. It is about time we listened to them, not for their benefit exclusively, which is a solid thing to do, but for our own benefit as well. What is happening presently is that people are leaving our country. In many ways, we are falsely advertising. I will wrap up with the analogy that we have invited them into our home, we have left open the back door, we have turned off the lights, raided the cupboard and said, “Welcome to Canada”. That is not good enough. We need to change that and hopefully, we will.