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The University of Ottawa and La Cité collégiale will be able to improve access to post-secondary health education in French, thanks to an investment of $25 million provided by Health Canada under the second phase of the training and research project of the Consortium national de formation en santé (CNFS).
The official announcement of the financing was made at La Cité collégiale by Pierre Pettigrew, the minister of health and the minister responsible for official languages, and Mauril Bélanger, MP for Ottawa-Vanier and deputy government House leader. They were welcomed by Andrée Lortie, president of La Cité collégiale, and Dr. Gilles Patry, rector of the University of Ottawa.
The money is being allocated under Health Canada’s Contribution Program to Improve Access to Health Services for Official Languages Minority Communities. Under this program, the federal government is committed to investing $63 million over five years in the training of health professionals in French.
The University of Ottawa did the groundwork for the CNFS in 1999, handling the co-ordination of the first phase of the project and undertaking the process of creating what became the consortium. At its start, the CNFS brought together six institutions in the francophone minority university network. This network played a role in the training of health professionals. In 2002 three colleges – including La Cité collégiale – joined the group.
The University of Ottawa will be receiving more than $17.5 million, which will enable the training of more students in medicine and other health-related disciplines and allow it to reach many of the goals of the second phase of the project.
“The strong support given by the federal health department gives new impetus to a pilot project that has already proven itself, and allows it to expand across Canada,” said Patry. “Phase II will allow us to build on past experience and go much further.”
Thanks to the funding, the University expects to welcome 160 new francophone students from areas of Canada where francophones are in the minority – 40 in medicine and 120 in other health-related disciplines. To meet the needs of these extra students, it will be necessary to hire extra professors.
In order to complete the training begun under the first phase of the project and produce 124 new graduates by the end of Phase II in 2008, the University will work closely with the Montfort Hospital, its principal partner in the creation of a francophone clinical milieu.
Thanks to distance training and new partnerships with institutions that are members of the consortium, the University will be able to enlarge the range of courses and programs it offers and make them more accessible. The institutions as a whole expect to recruit 2,500 new students over the course of the next five years.
It is also hoped that interdisciplinary research teams will be formed to study the health of francophone minorities.
La Cité collégiale will for its part receive $4.1 million during Phase II, while $3.3 million will go to the Consortium national de formation en santé.
