Federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre stops in Markham, talks ‘blue seal standard’ for foreign-trained doctors

Pierre Poilievre also touched on crime and housing

Yorkregion.com
April 6, 2023
Laura Broadley

Housing, crime and foreign-trained health care workers were some of the topics Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre touched on when he stopped in Markham.

“We don’t have enough places to put everyone. And even if you do have a home, you’ve been hit with the uppercut of higher interest rates on your mortgage, which the government promised would not happen,” he said.

Poilievre said Canada is unique for its high housing prices compared to other countries.

“Government gatekeepers prevent housing construction,” he said, adding his government would prevent municipalities from preventing home construction by “clawing back” on infrastructure funding.

Poilievre said crime has gone up since 2019 when Bill C-75 was passed, which he called “catch-and-release bail policies.”

“(The law) allows repeat, violent offenders, who’ve already been convicted 60 or 70 times, to be released the same day they’re arrested,” he said.

Poilievre pushed his idea to get provincial governments to agree to honour the “blue seal standard,” a nationally recognized testing standard that applies to Canadian-born and Canadian-educated doctors but also to foreign-born and foreign-educated doctors.

“Provinces tell us they want more doctors and nurses, and they’re always begging Ottawa for more money to pay for health care. Well, I’m giving them a bunch of new doctors and nurses without having to even spend money training them. All they have to do is agree to a competency-based standard for testing,” he said.