ACTION REQUIRED in Federal Election. Demand more residency positions. Demand access to healthcare for Canadians.

BY

ON

October 5, 2019

POSTED IN General

OCTOBER 21, 2019 FEDERAL ELECTION.  ACTION REQUIRED.

We write seeking your help.  To address the physician and waiting list shortage, a number of the political parties have promised funding to hire more doctors and to shorten waiting lists.  Our goal is to press the government to direct these funds to residency training positions for Canadian citizens and permanent residents and to have all residency training positions reserved for Canadians.

Please write the candidates in your riding stressing the importance of training more Canadians rather than training and recruiting foreigners.  Encourage your friends and relatives to do the same.

The MESSAGE is: 

  1. hire more physicians by funding residency training positions for Canadians.
  2. stop using our scarce training resources to train foreigners. The federal government must reinstate a requirement for a Labour Market Impact Assessment for all foreign visa applications for doctors pursuing residency training, which requires their employer prove that there is no Canadian citizen or permanent resident who is able and willing to take the job before issuing a work visa to a foreigner.

The RATIONALE is:

Directing funding to more residency training positions is an immediate and cost-effective solution.  We don’t need to recruit more doctors from foreign countries; and taxpayers don’t need to fund expensive new medical school places and wait over 6 years for their new doctors. Canadian citizens and permanent resident medical graduates who studied medicine abroad, passed all required exams of the Medical Council of Canada, and applied for residency training in Canada can begin working as resident physicians immediately and will be fully licensed in as little as two years.

The government under the Immigration Act has an obligation to put the interest of Canadians first:  Jobs for Canadians first; training resources for Canadians first.  The Immigration Act’s objective is to ensure this happens by requiring a Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) which requires that an employer proves that there is no Canadian citizen or permanent resident able and willing to take the job and that Canadian interests will not be negatively impacted before the government issues a work visa to a foreigner.  But in 2010, universities convinced the government to exempt residency training jobs from this requirement for their profit.  As a result, we cannot train enough Canadians to meet the physician needs of Canadians who struggle to find a family doctor and sit on long-waiting.  The government must begin enforcing the objective of “Canadians first” set out in the Immigration Act by reinstating the LMIA requirement for residency positions so residency jobs can be protected for Canadians who are citizens or permanent residents.

 

HOW DO WE INFLUENCE GOVERNMENT POLICY to make these changes?

  1. At the very least, we must make the request that these promised funds be used for residency training positions for Canadians and that the LMIA exemption for residency jobs be revoked. Please take an hour of your time to write the candidates in your riding stressing the importance of training more Canadians rather than training and recruiting foreigners.  Encourage your friends and relatives to do the same.

 

  1. However, with more effort we can increase substantially the chances of success by being strategic and using the tactics used by political party campaign managers to our advantage. To get the most out of our work and to substantially increase our chance of success, we need to adopt the SWING RIDING STRATEGY.

 

  1. We have received political advice from a political advisor and past cabinet minister in terms of how policy is formed during the election and how we can change policy:

 

a.  Campaign managers who determine policy during the election are focused primarily on the undecided voter in swing ridings.

b.  Some ridings will vote for a specific party no matter what so campaign strategies pay little attention to these ridings. It is the swing ridings where political parties direct their attention because it is these ridings which determine which party will form government.

c.  Campaign managers determine policy on the basis of undecided voters in swing ridings.  This is so because if you have decided who you are going to vote for, you are already in the bag or lost to the Party so you are of little interest in the strategy of the party which is only interested in being elected at this time.  Election campaign strategy from the parties point of view is about giving the undecided voters in swing ridings what they want to get their vote.  You have to be an “undecided voter” who exercises power by telling candidates the promises you require to get your vote.)

 

What can you do? You can work the SWING RIDING Strategy whether or not you are in a swing riding?

 

  1. If you are in a swing riding contact all the candidates in your riding (phone, write, or best of all go in) and tell the candidates:  You have not decided who you will be voting fo the party which
    1. agrees to channel the funding it promised to address the doctor shortage and long waiting lists into residency training positions for Canadians; and
    2. revokes the LMIA exemption for medical residency jobs, i.e., stops allowing foreigners (primarily Saudi Arabians) to use up scarce and valuable training resources for the profit of the universities to the detriment of Canadians and starts requiring that all employers seeking to obtain a working visa for foreigners to work as resident physicians prove (as required by the Immigration and Refugee Act of Canada) that there is no Canadian citizen or permanent resident able and willing to take the job before being granted such a visa.

 

2.  Encourage people in your riding to do the same by phoning or door knocking.

 

3.  If you do not live in a swing riding, of if you do and are prepared to work harder to make this strategy work.

    1. Go door to door with letters or a Petition for signature in a Swing Riding near you.  You will need to collect the name, address, and signature of the person who supports us in the need to fund more residency positions and revoke the LMIA exemption so that Canadians are no longer displaced by foreigners when it comes to medical residency training jobs.

 

    1. The letter or Petition should say something along the lines of:

 

“To Member of Parliament candidates of [name of riding]

I will be voting in the next election.

I believe all Canadians deserve to have access to a family doctor and to see specialists in a reasonable time.  Long waiting lists are hurting Canadians.

I support the federal government funding more residency training for doctors, and that the funding be transferred to provinces with a requirement that it be used to create more residency positions for all qualified Canadians doctors educated either in Canada or abroad.

The federal government must also reinstate a requirement for a Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) for all foreign visa applications for doctors pursuing residency training.  The LMIA requires employers to prove that there is no Canadian citizen or permanent resident who is able and willing to take the residency training job before a visa can be issued to a foreigner. Currently foreign countries, including Saudi Arabia, have over 1,000 of their citizens training in Canadian hospitals taking jobs that could be filled by Canadians. After training, these individuals return to their home country, and do not help alleviate the doctor shortage in Canada.  The current policy favours profit and foreign interests over what is best for Canadians.

Scarce medical training resources must be prioritized for training Canadian doctors who will serve Canadians.

 

Your Name

Your Address

Your Signature”

 

If you are in Canada this month, you don’t even need anybody to help you.  You don’t need to live in the riding.  Draft up this petition or something similar or draft letters for those in swing ridings to sign.  Do some phoning and/or door knocking in a swing riding near you for an afternoon.  Doesn’t everyone want to be able to get to a doctor, shorten waiting lists, and have a “Canadians first” predisposition?

 

Encourage the people in swing ridings to give their candidates a call or go visit them.  Leave the numbers and addresses of the candidates in the riding so they are more likely to make the call or set up a visit.

 

WHERE ARE THE SWING RIDINGS?  The swing ridings are posted right here on this website.

 

The REALITY is:  That most of us do nothing.  If we do nothing, we will not get more residency positions and the physician shortage and long waiting lists will continue.  Please do something.  It will change people’s lives.

 

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