Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Good afternoon, everyone. I'm sorry that I was a bit late, but we've caught up. Some people got here after me.
The whole issue of recognizing credentials is not a new problem. The problem existed 40 years ago. I worked for a long time in pediatrics and I remember a resident at Sainte-Justine who turned out not to have a degree in medicine. So the requirements were tightened up, and I find that acceptable.
However, when you tighten up the requirements too much, you wind up in a situation where qualified people loose their qualification because it's too difficult.
This morning, in the car on the way here, I was thinking about you. When you're all alone, you get to thinking. I have a question that I'd like to ask everyone. I imagine that in countries as developed as our own—and there are a lot of them—the training must be more or less equivalent, whether in medicine, dentistry, engineering, architecture or pharmacy. Do you currently have a bias in favour of certain faculties? For example, do you decide that for people who have done their studies in England, Germany or Finland, automatically, that's okay?
If you are already doing that, would it be conceivable to have placements, and not six months, one year or two years after arriving in Canada or Quebec? Basically, what you want to verify is know-how in all professions. That goes for nurses too. It's one thing to have the knowledge, but to ensure quality care, you also have to verify that the person has the know-how. The person has to have the soft skills too, of course, but the know-how as well. In health, that is verified in a clinical setting, and for the other professions, it is done in the field. Is that conceivable?
I was listening to the statistics about the number of doctors coming from abroad that we would need to meet basic needs, to deal with the health situation. It seems to me that it should be possible to do that. I heard you say, for example, that the universities have no more money. That's true. However, I do know that in a lot of hospitals, it's getting very hard for residents to live up to their responsibilities. Surely there must be some way to reconcile the needs of the hospital with those of the doctor on the way to being accreditated and those of the profession.
Ms. Lemay, you weren't talking about health, but you were saying that a few years ago, 23,000 assessments were being done, and that the number is now 1,500. I guess there's a problem. That really surprises me.
I'd like to hear what you have to say about that. My mind was wandering this morning on the drive and I thought that this might be feasible.