Josie Osborne said the province is doing everything it can to attract new health-care professionals, \u201cand to have this happen by some kind of bureaucratic mess at the federal level, it\u2019s just unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Health Minister Josie Osborne says a \u201cbureaucratic mess\u201d that resulted in a Scottish midwife\u2019s post-graduate work permit request twice being rejected can\u2019t be allowed to happen again.<\/p>\n
Heather Gilchrist had been working for a Victoria midwife collective for seven months when she was given 90 days to leave the country by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada in March.<\/p>\n
She told the Times Colonist on Saturday that\u00a0she won\u2019t return to Victoria from <\/a>Scotland<\/a>, saying restrictions around the new work permit she\u2019s been offered are far too limiting.<\/p>\n In a scrum on Monday at the B.C. legislature, Osborne said she shares Gilchrist\u2019s frustration. \u201cI am so disappointed to learn that she\u2019s made the decision not to come back to B.C., and this cannot happen again.\u201d<\/p>\n Osborne said the province is doing everything it can to train and attract new health-care professionals, \u201cand to have this happen by some kind of bureaucratic mess at the federal level, it\u2019s just unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n Gilchrist, who has a master\u2019s degree and 10 years of experience in midwifery in Scotland, graduated from a nine-month Internationally Educated \u00adMidwives Bridging Program through the University of B.C.<\/p>\n She was registered with the B.C. College of Nurses and Midwives, granted hospital privileges at Victoria General Hospital, and nominated by the province to work here.<\/p>\n But federal immigration officials initially denied her a post-graduate work permit, saying it hadn\u2019t received the results of her English-competency exam, then rejected her a second time, saying her UBC certificate wasn\u2019t eligible for a work permit.<\/p>\n Osborne said what Gilchrist went through was \u201cabsolutely ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n UBC said its bridging course for internationally educated midwives, launched in 2015, was designed to meet federal immigration requirements and the vast majority of graduates obtained their work permits and are working in Canada. It called Gilchrist\u2019s situation a first.<\/p>\n Osborne said she\u2019s writing to the federal health and immigration ministers to ask them \u201cto make it very clear\u201d that the course to allow midwives to work in B.C. \u201cdoes meet the needs\u201d of a post-graduate work permit and that \u201cany application that is in process right now will benefit from that clarification.\u201d<\/p>\n She is also asking the federal ministers to work with the provinces and territories to identify any other type of equivalency test or bridging program where there may be \u201csomething out there lurking that we don\u2019t know about that\u2019s going to create this kind of problem for people.\u201d<\/p>\n Gilchrist, who arrived in Canada in 2024, headed back to Scotland on April 4.<\/p>\n When she landed, she received correspondence from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada offering her an employer-specific work permit, valid until April 2029, that would only allow her to work for a specific collective in a specific region.<\/p>\n Under the post-graduate work permit, she would have had the flexibility to work as a midwife anywhere in B.C.<\/p>\n UBC has said it is working with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada \u201cto understand their needs\u201d and support \u201call of our current learners and recent graduates.\u201d<\/p>\n The Midwives Association of B.C. says the province is facing a critical shortage of maternity-care providers, including midwives.<\/p>\n