Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre proposed on Sunday to set up a national exam that might potentially be taken by some 53,000 immigrant doctors or nurses currently unable to work in their field.
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More concretely, Mr. Poilievre believes that foreign health care workers should be required to pass an exam to measure their skills. If these are up to standard, they would receive “blue seal” certification and might work in any province that joins the program.
“Only 41% of foreign-educated doctors work as doctors and 37% of foreign-educated nurses work as nurses […] This means that 34,105 nurses and 18,900 foreign-trained doctors in our country do not practice the profession they have chosen,” denounced the Conservative Party of Canada in a press release.
The Conservatives have castigated the current system where cumbersome procedures discourage more than half of newcomers to the health field from obtaining the right to pursue their profession, despite the glaring lack of manpower in the field.
“I will end this bureaucratic madness and bring our doctors and nurses home to help fix our broken health care system,” Poilievre said.
