While politicians tout the benefits of reducing interprovincial trade barriers to unlock prosperity amid escalating trade tensions, our most precious health-care resources — fully qualified doctors — remain shackled. Physicians face a maze of regulations when attempting to practise beyond their home province. We must break these chains.
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Authors:
- Anthony Sanfilippo - professor of Medicine (Cardiology), Queen’s University, Ontario
- Neil Seeman - Senior Fellow, Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, University of Toronto, and Adjunct Professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto
This could be easily solved without stopping doctors from having mobility to the majority of Canada. Moreover, some regions have people who speak English or French poorly, if at all. The concerns you raise will almost always apply to them, so how many languages are you going to require doctors learn before they can practice? Or do you insist that all doctors just be bilingual? Is just French okay?
You could easily craft a federal law that requires any doctor to be licensed in a given region be fluent in the primary language of that region. Yes, that would limit doctors going in or out of Quebec (and other regions to a lesser degree). But how does stopping someone from being able to practice in both BC and Ontario without needless hurdles help or harm Quebec?
This whole thread started with me saying:
The rest of what I wrote is just trying to get people with dismissive attitudes towards my argument (“absolute nonsense”) to empathize with my point of view.
Now, your second paragraph basically operationalizes exactly what I’m talking about. We are in agreement.