Latest / Kvetch & Release / 610 CKTB| Training the Away Team On Home Ice: Should Canada Invest in Foreign Doctors Over Canadians?

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610 CKTB| Training the Away Team On Home Ice: Should Canada Invest in Foreign Doctors Over Canadians? · Kvetch & Release

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Every Tuesday morning, our regular contributor John Lidkey is here.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: He's rough, he's tough, he's gruff. Yeah, I like him
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: or you don't. It's just like that. Good morning John.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: Good morning Geane. I'll take it.
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  Speaker 1: Well, there's a couple of things we need to talk
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  Speaker 1: about now. Yesterday and volitis on the news, I was
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: talking about the story and it goes back to the
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  Speaker 1: University of Toronto's Temorty Faculty of Medicine, and what they
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: do is they offer programs to five hundred international physicians
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  Speaker 1: a year. Their home countries have to pay one hundred
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  Speaker 1: thousand dollars. These students come here, they train them as
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  Speaker 1: doctors and then they go back to their home country
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  Speaker 1: credentials as Canadian doctors. Now, one of the leading countries
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  Speaker 1: giving money to the UFT is Saudi Arabia and sending
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  Speaker 1: their people here. Now, Saudi Arabia, of course, is a dictatorship.
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  Speaker 1: It's accused of human rights abuses, it includes political executions.
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  Speaker 1: They still do beheadings, they have killed foreign journalists. And
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  Speaker 1: at a committee in Ottawa last week, a member of
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  Speaker 1: parliament who happens to be a doctor in Kitchener was
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  Speaker 1: asking doctor Patricia Houston if she could answer the question
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  Speaker 1: should women in Saudi Arabia be allowed to drive a car?
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  Speaker 1: And amazingly enough, she could not answer that question, John,
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  Speaker 1: what's going on?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, this is a tough situation. When you
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  Speaker 2: end up taking this kind of money from foreign countries
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  Speaker 2: that might not have the same human rights records and
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  Speaker 2: values as US, but you become dependent on that stream
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  Speaker 2: of revenue, it becomes very difficult to criticize where that
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  Speaker 2: money comes from, and you end up with really uncomfortable
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  Speaker 2: and difficult testimony like we saw.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, eighteen million dollars, that's a lot of do come
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  Speaker 1: from Saudi Arabia. Yeah, you know it is.
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  Speaker 2: And I think when we talk about how much money
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  Speaker 2: is actually coming in here a year, we're talking about
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  Speaker 2: a thousand Saudi funded doctors a year in Canada total,
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  Speaker 2: and in total for foreign doctors that are here training,
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  Speaker 2: it's about double that. Saudi Arabia makes up about half
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  Speaker 2: of it right now. So you know, we're talking about
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  Speaker 2: one hundred million dollars two hundred million dollars total here roughly,
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  Speaker 2: And I would be arguing that we should just be
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  Speaker 2: investing that money ourselves to ensure that the thousands of
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  Speaker 2: internationally trained Canadian graduates have residency spots that they can't
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  Speaker 2: access today. So there are government quotas that state how
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  Speaker 2: many spots international medical graduate Canadians are able to take
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  Speaker 2: in the country versus foreign spots. But we know what
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  Speaker 2: the situation that we're dealing with here. We have a
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  Speaker 2: doctor shortage that exists already in this country, and I
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  Speaker 2: think most people would be questioning, why are we training
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  Speaker 2: foreign doctors who are, by the very nature of the
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  Speaker 2: agreement going to leave at the end of their tenure.
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  Speaker 2: We are essentially here training the away team to compete
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  Speaker 2: against us on our own home turf. It's kind of
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  Speaker 2: crazy when you wrap your head around it. And with
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  Speaker 2: Saudi Arabia specifically, and I don't want to, you know,
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  Speaker 2: specifically center out Saudi here other than the fact that
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  Speaker 2: they make a path and the testimony that we saw
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  Speaker 2: specifically related to them, so it's a timely news story.
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  Speaker 2: They're specifically doing this because they are issuing a vision
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  Speaker 2: twenty thirty where they want to completely improve and radicalize
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  Speaker 2: their health network In gosh, don't you think we should
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  Speaker 2: be doing something like that here too, rather than helping
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  Speaker 2: another country achieve that.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Well, we talked about this on the show last week.
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  Speaker 1: Six point one million Canadians can't find a family doctor,
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  Speaker 1: and in twenty twenty four across Canada, over twenty thousand Canadians,
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  Speaker 1: including something like ten thousand in Ontario. Ontario unfortunately led
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  Speaker 1: the way, died on medical waiting lists. So I'm wondering,
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: we need Canadian doctors. I don't get this program. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: we do.
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  Speaker 2: And listen, I've dove into this program a lot over
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: the past couple days trying to understand it, and there
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  Speaker 2: are merits to the program. What hospitals say is we
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  Speaker 2: need these people. They're already trained as doctors, and getting
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  Speaker 2: them into a position where they can actually be working
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  Speaker 2: on the floor and doing the very necessary services but
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  Speaker 2: hospitals rely on is crucial for them. The flip side
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  Speaker 2: to that is, could we achieve that with Canadian doctors? Yes?
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  Speaker 2: How do we get there? More money, more investment, We
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  Speaker 2: need to have more medical schools, we need to increase
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  Speaker 2: residency spots. But the problem is is those things take time.
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  Speaker 2: They will come out after the next election cycle, and gosh,
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  Speaker 2: what politician wants to do something for the politician of tomorrow.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, good point. I like your comments. We're training the
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: away team on home ice. That was good. Hey it's frustrating. Yeah, John,
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  Speaker 1: always great to talk to you on Tuesday morning. Thank
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  Speaker 1: you so much. Love your perspectives, Rank Ejene. Okay, there
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  Speaker 1: he goes John Litkey. We have them on every twonesday
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: morning