Canadian immigrants are overqualified and underemployed — reforms must address this.
Blaming newcomers — particularly international students and their spouses — for job shortages overlooks deeper structural issues in the labour market.
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How many doctors and surgeons are going to waste in the midst of a Canadian health-care crisis?
Also in AB - I once worked with a general surgeon, a fucking surgeon(!), who could only get work as kitchen staff at a hotel. …or a taxi driver, but he hated that.
Also, a high-school teacher, and an electrician (3 phase qualified …or something like that?).
One was a bus-boy.
I know a cardiovascular tech who is a pediatric cardiologist in Pakistan. He feels lucky to have this job even though it's a waste of his talents, and worked as a security guard when he got here. I also know a psychiatrist from South Africa who was forced to work as a GP for five years in rural Nova Scotia before being able to practice in his field, a German psychiatrist who had to redo five years of residency, a Bolivian neurologist who became a PA and is redoing his residency, and my own GP was a respirologist in Croatia and had to go back through medical school to work here. It's a waste of much needed talent, and while there are certainly educational differences, surely we could create bridging programs for these doctors to get them up to our skill requirements and fast track them. Instead we continue to import people to work at Tim Hortons or simply not at all, in a housing crunch. It's a huge waste. International doctors often are the only ones who work in subspecialist clinics, because some specialities are not very well paid if you are Canadian and went to school here, so we really do need them.
The other problem nobody is addressing is how the Saudi government buys their doctors positions here and gives them large pensions for it, and they're sometimes not very qualified, and I've had some male residents who REALLY hate women because they're conservative Muslims and don't think they should have to work with us. The Saudi government will also demand their doctors come back whenever they want by taking away their pensions, and make them come back and work in hospitals there. They also will stop Saudi women from going to medical school here. I don't know how much money they hand our health care system, but it's hugely problematic and unethical.
How many doctors and surgeons are going to waste in the midst of a Canadian health-care crisis?
The health-care crisis is at least partially intentional. Here in Ontario, Doug Ford wants to introduce a two-tiered system where people with money can pay for enhanced services. He promised to end hallway healthcare before he was elected the first time.
He's had almost 8 years to do something and it's only gotten worse. He could've fixed so many things if he'd wanted to. He doesn't want to.
He refused federal funding years ago when it came with a clause that all the money had to go to public health care until Ontarians found out about this and he backed down and accepted the funding (something like 200 million I think), only to cut Ontario spending on public healthcare and redirect it to private hospitals a few years later.
Ford is Ontario's greatest salesman ever, selling off the province one sector at a time to his oligarchic buddies, even all the while the courts get inundated with lawsuits due to the laws and contracts he signs. Hell, I think the greenbelt lawsuit is set to start a week after the provincial election. Why do you think he called it when it did?
That pretty much applies to most provinces. Private health-care companies from the US are all over pushing gullible, and/or greedy conservatives (closer in mindset to the US), or any other politicians who are willing (Libs too, but not so much NDP as they are seem as more ‘Canadian fringe’’ and seen as less effectual), into breaking Canada’s public heath care/social medicine so private services can move in (they’re here now) and ‘save the day’ in the short term; then fuck us long and slow for profit after we’ve solidified the new model.
Sound about right, Canada?
