Better utilization of immigrants' skills is key to retaining them

While Jennings may be right about the government's lack of leadership on this particular issue, the reality is that no political party, current or previous provincial or federal government has done anything to remedy this situation; which seems almost absurd when one considers the lack of qualified professionals in this country.

While the front page of last Wednesday's Gazette was screaming Family MDs harder to find (as if this were an earth-shattering revelation and not the status quo in Quebec for the past decade), qualified foreign-born physicians are being cast aside or waiting in limbo, underutilized, as their Canadian counterparts retire and we scramble to find someone to replace them.

Countless studies have demonstrated that, although educational credentials among recent immigrants are higher on average than those of Canada's native-born workforce and are rising, the trends in immigrants' employment and earnings are downward. This clearly suggests that the real problem isn't their skill levels (and there's no question that foreign credential recognition programs should be absolutely adamant about adequately verifying the education and job experience of foreign-born professionals), but rather the extent to which these skills are accepted and effectively utilized in our workplace.

Which begs the question "why?" Is an education acquired in Canada automatically perceived as better by most employers, and if so, how can those perceptions change?

In a recent interview to <@Ri>The Senior Times<$p> Montreal-born journalist, Jan Wong, discussing the problem of proper integration of immigrants in Canada, stated: "We have the most highly educated taxi drivers in the world." The 2001 census revealed that among recent immigrants with a university degree, at least one in four had a job requiring no more than a high-school education".

While one in four Canadians can't find a family doctor, there are 4,000 foreign-trained doctors in Ontario alone who can't get a license to practice medicine! The shortage is even worse in Quebec, but it doesn't seem to have stopped the Quebec Liberal Party from rambling on about having newcomers sign a "moral commitment" to the province's core values, the ADQ debating religious instruction and the PQ playing the same old separation song and dance. None of these parties and their leaders seem to get it. They are all anachronisms; typewriters in a digital world that's changing fast. This province has a desperate need for qualified professionals and there's a ready and eager supply available and we're sitting around playing hard to get?

With boroughs like CDN/NDG registering close to 45% of foreign-born residents, this is not a problem affecting some. This is a problem that promises to have significant economic, social and political repercussions for this province's and this country's future. The doctor shortage is just one problem that could be easily rectified if the provincial government started thinking outside of the box. With a rapidly aging population, we can no longer afford to make the wrong decisions.