Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre on Sunday proposed setting up a national exam that could potentially be taken by around 53,000 immigrant doctors or nurses currently unable to work in their field.
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More specifically, Mr Poilievre believes that foreign medical personnel should be required to pass an exam to measure their skills. If these meet the standard, they would receive the “Blue Seal” certificate and could work in any province that joins the program.
“Only 41% of foreign-trained doctors work as doctors and 37% of foreign-trained nurses work as nurses […] This means that 34,105 nurses and 18,900 foreign-trained doctors are not practicing their profession in our country,” criticized the Conservative Party of Canada in a press release.
Conservatives have lashed out at the current system, in which cumbersome procedures prevent more than half of newcomers to the health sector from gaining the right to practice their profession, despite the glaring shortage of workers in the field.
“I will end this bureaucratic madness and bring our doctors and nurses home to help fix our broken healthcare system,” Poilievre said.