Federal, provincial and territorial statement on supporting Canada's health workforce

October 12, 2023

Today, we reaffirmed our commitment to our shared priority of supporting Canada's health workforce so our health workers are able to provide high-quality, accessible, and effective health services for people living in Canada.

The health workforce in Canada has been facing significant challenges. We recognize that concerted and collaborative efforts by federal, provincial, and territorial governments^{Footnote 1} are needed to continue to address these challenges, and our strategies must address the needs facing all professions across our health workforce. In particular, focusing attention on:

Retention, reducing rates of stress and burnout and improving workplace culture, flexibility, and wellness so health workers can stay in their jobs;

Domestic education supply and demand, enhancing Canada’s capacity to produce a domestic supply of key health professionals, including more training opportunities for Indigenous Peoples that meets national demand for care and keeps pace with a growing and aging population;

Foreign credential recognition, making Canada a country of choice for health care providers by reducing the time it takes for internationally educated health professionals (IEHPs) to join our workforce;

Labour mobility, supporting an agile and flexible workforce to support access to care; and

Health workforce and data planning, improving the availability, sharing and standardization of health workforce data to support health workforce planning.

Over the past year, we have taken collective action to address health workforce challenges and support our health workers. This includes:

• The Government of Canada focusing efforts on retaining our health workforce through the Nursing Retention Forum and the creation of the "Improving the Working Lives of Nurses in Canada" Toolkit, and funding projects that support mentorship and the mental health of the workforce.
• Provinces and territories increasing the number of training seats for physicians, nurse practitioners and nurses. For example, they will add additional medical seats by 2025, which includes the addition of three new medical schools at Simon Fraser University, Toronto Metropolitan University, and the University of Prince Edward Island.
• Making it easier for IEHPs to come to Canada, including the use of category-based selection to facilitate faster entry to Canada. Provincial governments have been working to implement innovative approaches to expedite foreign credential recognition processes and get these skilled workers integrated into our health workforce and the Government of Canada commits to continuing to take action through federal immigration programs to make it easier for foreign trained health workers to immigrate to and obtain residency in Canada.
• The Government of Canada is funding the creation of the Centre of Excellence for the Future of the Health Workforce, a partnership with the Canadian Institute for Health Information that will lead a collaborative pan-Canadian approach to improve data collection, analysis, knowledge mobilization and policy advice. These efforts will enable access to more and better data on the health workforce and support evidence-based health workforce planning and capacity, improving Canada's health system as a whole and position Canada as a leader in health workforce and data planning.

Building on this progress, we agree that there is still much work to be done and commit to continue on the path we have set out, working together to improve healthcare for Canadians. That is why today, we have committed to concrete actions:

• We will continue to work collaboratively on health workforce retention issues facing all professions across the health workforce, with a focus on nursing retention this year and other health professions in future years. Ministers agree to promote the dissemination and implementation of the "Improving the Working Lives of Nurses in Canada" Toolkit this Fall. Ministers also met with nursing stakeholders in the morning where they discussed the importance of exploring solutions to reduce the reliance on agency nurses.
• Ministers commit to undertake a study of the education and training supply and demand for key healthcare professions to identify the best pan-Canadian approaches to meet future healthcare demands for Canadians over the next decade, including addressing misalignment in the distribution of workers across regions and settings. They also reaffirmed their support for the medical residency requirement for family medicine to remain at two years. Ministers reiterated the importance of having the Canadian residency match occur on a more timely basis to ensure the best opportunities for medical graduates who wish to train in Canada.
• We will reduce the time it takes to join our workforce by encouraging and facilitating IEHPs to begin to undertake credentialing processes overseas. We will work with health regulators to strive to provide licensure to qualified physicians and nurses within 90 days once source verification of credentials is confirmed and immigration approvals are in place. We will expedite pathways to licensure for physicians and nurses who have successfully completed training and education that is equivalent to a graduate from an approved Canadian program, as well as create and leverage alternate pathways to get IEHPs in the health workforce faster. This includes a commitment from the Government of Canada to continue to take action through federal immigration programs to make it easier for foreign trained health workers to immigrate to and obtain residency in Canada. In support of these efforts, we also reiterate our commitment to the ethical international recruitment of IEHPs, based on the principles and practices of the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel.
• We will implement a process that allows health professionals that are in good standing in one jurisdiction to practice in any other Canadian jurisdiction without significant delay or the need to meet additional regulatory requirements, with a focus on physicians this year and nursing in future years. As part of this, work will continue to ensure quality patient care is maintained and clarity on regulatory responsibilities and oversight is provided for practitioners.
• Ministers commit to working together to improve the availability, sharing and standardization of health workforce data to improve planning as well supporting the establishment of the Centre of Excellence for the Future of the Health Workforce.

These actions and our continued collaboration will support our health workforce and builds on our shared objective of ensuring all Canadians, regardless of where they live or their ability to pay, can access the care they need, when they need it.

+Manitoba remains in a caretaker period and is not a party to this Health Workforce Statement.