Health committee  Thank you. I would agree 100% with Michael. Clearly the evidence tells us that some of the incentives are pretty simple. It might be helping to reduce the debt from tuition, for instance. It could be incentives that would be, again, looking at working to maximum scope and providing regular hours, which means that we have the appropriate staffing in place.

Health committee  I actually wouldn't have that number. I would defer to Michael Villeneuve on that number.

Health committee  I can answer that, Mr. Chair. What we have learned is that we haven't done a very good job. There are some provinces and territories that have taken this seriously, definitely the federal government as well, to find innovative ways we can actually spend more time with our workers prior to their coming to Canada: for instance, working at the country level and offering distance learning, English while in country, and moving towards the credentialing opportunity while in country.

Health committee  Thank you for the question. When we do comparisons between OECD countries by numbers, I think that looking at a number of something by population only gives us one picture. It doesn't give us what the needs of the population are or the care delivery system in which nurses and others are actually participating.

Health committee  Across the province, we are looking at high vacancy rates. In Nova Scotia Health, the provincial health authority, as you're aware, there are about 800 vacancies right now. We are already working short. We do have many good strategies in place that we are feeling very optimistic about, strategies that have to do with hiring students, for instance, during their programs, which gives students a sense of value and of becoming part of the health care system early, as opposed to at the time of graduation.

Health committee  Yes. The issues at the time were that we focused largely in this country on increasing seats—nursing seats, for instance, medical seats—without really thinking about what other strategies could be in place: How do we actually retain the workforce that is already there? Retention at that time, and strategies that are still pertinent today, was in finding ways to value the workers, to have staffing ratios and staffing patterns in place so that services can be delivered to Canadians that match their needs.

Health committee  Mr. Chair, what I would like to say is that we know that health care is a federal but also a provincial and territorial issue. If we look across this country, what the Royal Society of Canada paper has demonstrated is that some of the provinces and territories are taking on innovation and investing in innovation differently from others.

Health committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for this opportunity. It was quite clear when that study happened some time ago that there were issues similar to the ones today. If we go to a decade before that, there were similar issues at that time. For the study, we focused on what the health needs were—