Their names are Tatiana, Houda, Dorice or Esther. They come from Cameroon, Morocco, Algeria or Mauritius. They are now in the Bas-du-Fleuve, but they could also be in Abitibi, in Gaspésie and on the North Shore. They are nurses who have come to lend a hand to the Quebec health system. This program, announced a year ago, aims to welcome 1,000 foreign nurses, of whom more than 200 are already in training in CEGEPs in the province.
Most of them are experienced, so that after 9 or 12 months of training, they will be able to work in Quebec hospitals. In the Bas-du-Fleuve media, their journey is told in great detail. The story usually unfolds like a fairy tale. From the excitement of the first snowstorm to the discovery of Quebec expressions, including that of Chinese pie. Scenes of daily life made up of astonishment and surprises, small disappointments and wonder. It would bring tears to anyone.
These personal stories are obviously touching, but they do not tell the whole story. Far from there. First, they say nothing about the complexity of this immigration, which is often temporary and fraught with obstacles because the roots of peoples are stronger than we think. Second, they conceal the fate of these poor countries whose medical personnel we plunder, thus helping to turn them into medical deserts. A plundering of brains which is not far from resembling that of natural resources which was still practiced yesterday, this time in the name of colonialism.
In an article published in the medical journal The Lancet in 2008, the Canadian doctor Edward Mills described as “criminal” the recruitment of thousands of doctors from the African continent. In France, where an immigration law plans to follow Canada’s lead by creating a specific residence permit for medical personnel, it is estimated that more than 1,000 Algerian doctors are working in the country today. However, Algeria has only 15 doctors per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to 380 in France. Do the math!
How would we react tomorrow if Quebec nurses were the object of such a raid, and “if the Quebec system was bled by this market of supply and demand”? This is the legitimate question posed last year in The right Professor Nicolas Vonarx, from the Faculty of Nursing at Laval University.
I remember a visit to Madagascar, where a Malagasy minister directly challenged Prime Minister Philippe Couillard. She regretted that the young people who received professional training scholarships in Quebec rarely returned to the country. Far from enriching the Madagascans, these “generous” scholarships only stripped them of their lifeblood. “Instead of solving the fundamental problems, we are turning to this potential reservoir by aggravating the structural shortages from which the continent suffers”, declared recently to the African edition of the World former president of Doctors Without Borders Rony Brauman.
It is difficult not to detect hints of colonialism in this way of passing off as charity what is basically nothing but systematic plundering of the poorest countries. Because the most fascinating thing is that this new colonialism unfolds in the name of sacrosanct “diversity” and “openness to others”. Nothing less !
Not a day goes by without a report glorifying these workers from abroad or making an ode to Roxham Road. As if it were necessary to derive a moral superiority from welcoming ever more immigrants. As if we were engaged in a contest of virtue and that instead of telling the beads as our grandfathers did
parents, we had to list the names of migrants that we would have miraculously “saved” from the worst.
But saved from what, exactly? From the duty that should be everyone’s to fight to improve the situation of his loved ones where he is, in his country, whether it is poor or not. It is obviously not a question of reproaching individuals for wanting to improve their lot – and especially not the real refugees -, but of remembering that the future of Africans is in Africa, where they can best contribute to getting their people out misery. All the more so if their country has bled itself white to provide them with quality training.
As for Quebec, shouldn’t it get down to solving its labor problems itself by investing in its population instead of relying on the crutch of immigration? Massive immigration which, in the long run, often creates as many problems as it solves. Starting with the problems of integration which, despite everyone’s good will, often stretch over several generations, as so many examples in the world show us.
Passing off a business as charity
neocolonial overtones which considers human capital as a mere commodity, such is the whole perversity of the discourse of diversity which is today the dominant ideology in Canada.