By Cecilia Nasmith

Northumberland County Council has voted support for Brighton's call for the province to streamline governing legislation for physicians in Ontario in order to get qualifying immigrant doctors practicing at a time when medical personnel are in shorter supply.

The call has also come from the Township of Huron Shores.

The original resolution pointed out the difficulty of attracting primary health-care providers to smaller communities, and pointed out that the province had come up with a program to attract nurses to under-served areas of Ontario.

“At the end of the day, we have discovered we have a couple of guests from Ukraine in our community, who are doctors and who will be looking to stay if they can actually practice.”

They are internationally trained doctors, Ostrander pointed out, and have practiced in Europe. In spite of that, “they would have to go through a rigourous process, and we all know the rigourous process for foreign-trained doctors.”

“We are just asking the government of Ontario to look closely at different processes so we can streamline doctors a little more quickly,” Ostrander said.

Measures in the Brighton resolution include looking at the requirement for Canadian experience when all other requirements are met and implementing Practice Ready Assessment programs similar to those already used in seven other provinces.

County council's motion of support called for a copy to be sent to the West Northumberland Physician Recruitment and Retention Committee. Though Brighton and Trent Hills are the only municipalities not covered by the group, the idea was to keep them in the loop.