Nick Noorani Website

In a conversation with me, Citizenship & Immigration Minister Diane Finley said the Governemnt wants to fast track Doctors and health care workers.
Let me understand this: every time I ask a cabbie in Toronto their profession – most of them say they are international medical graduates (IMG). Doctors. Driving cabs. We have them here – why are we bringing in more? I know a cardiac surgeon who washed dishes in Toronto before literally throwing in the towel and returning to China! The fact is that changes to the way IMG’s get internship is not a Federal jurisdiction but a Provincial one. Let’s first fix this before we ruin more lives of talented, trained professionals! And while they are at it, scrutinize the old boy’s clubs that sets restrictive barriers for IMG’s into the professional arena.

Jumping the line
Doctors and other health-care workers will be a priority for immigration under new rules the federal government has introduced for deciding who gets into Canada.
“The (immigration) system simply is not flexible enough to meet labour market needs,” a senior official in the Department of Citizenship and Immigration told reporters. The official, who can’t be named under departmental rules, said that by 2012, all of Canada’s labour growth will be met through immigration.
Canada’s immigration backlog is 925,000 people. Under current rules, they must be processed in chronological order, regardless of skills. The government plans to give the immigration minister power to send some types of workers, including doctors, to the front of the line.
The news delighted physician groups, though they warned that importing doctors is not as simple as just stamping entry papers.
“Generally we would support anything that facilitates qualified health-care professionals being able to come to Canada,” said Dr. Calvin Gutkin, executive director of the College of Family Physicians of Canada. However, doctors trained in other countries must be given a realistic view of the standards they must meet before they can practise here, he said.
IRRESPONSIBLE PLANNING
“We’ve been in a position in the last few years where we’re dependent on foreign graduates to fill all the blanks because we basically have been irresponsible in our own planning and have not trained enough Canadians to care for our growing and aging population,” Gutkin said.
The Canadian Medical Association has said Canada is 26,000 doctors short of its target ratio in comparison to other countries.
Dr. Andrew Padmos, CEO of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, said steps to boost the supply of health-care workers are “clearly welcome — but filling doctor shortages through immigration is “a short-term solution.”
“We would like the continued expansion of our own (doctor-training) programs,” he said.
Ensuring that foreign-trained doctors meet Canadian standards and can be certified puts “great stress” on provincial regulators, Padmos said. “You need people to act as mentors and supervisors, and many are already committed to academic programs.”
The immigration department said moving health care workers to the head of the line for processing would have to involve talks with provincial governments and accreditation bodies to ensure they could practise here.
http://winnipegsun.com/News/Canada/2008/04/09/5232671-sun.html