Okay. How would you do that?
Personally, we could have visas tied to employment in a specific part of the country. Example: the North of short of doctors. You're a medical professional who wants to come to Canada? We'll expedite your passage if you agree to live in Flin Flon, Manitoba for 10 years. Or if you want to work in the mines, or so on ...
But who knows if that's constitutional, and Justin definitely doesn't have the gut for that.
I take no issue w/your suggestion.
Though, I think we would be well served to address specific issues that crop up time and again with why people don't want to work in these places, voluntarily.
In the case of doctors, here are a few things we hear:
1) If you're the only doctor, or even one of two, the workload is incredible and unending, its a 24/7 on-call, because there is no one else, and the effort of finding a locum (temporary replacement) should you wish to take a vacation, or attend a family
event of significance elsewhere or even do some professional development is huge.
We need to organize group practices in any area that can remotely support same, with a bare minimum of 2 doctors, but ideally 3 or more, so that people (doctors) can actually have some days off, some evenings to themselves and some flexibility to leave the community from time to time.
2) Lack of equipment and resources. So many small communities don't even have a single CT Scanner, and there isn't one for 100km or, perhaps, 1000km. That's nuts. Even if the traffic (use of the machine) doesn't pay for itself, the vast majority of Ontarians/Canadians need to have access to certain basic medical resources. The cost of which could easily be paid for by the simple move to province-wide bulk purchasing of diagnostic imaging machines, instead of going hospital by hospital.
(this applies to other types of equipment/medicine/labs etc. as well, but CT scanners are the single most expensive/high profile example).
3) We also need to address remote specialist appointments, and remote emergency resources for doctors, amongst other things to make medical life easier.
4) Finally, we need to address quality-of-life amenities for physicians where practical. We cannot make Flin-Flon a city with a top tier university or an opera company. But there is lots we can do in terms of providing better
hub-city supports (what can you reach within a 2-hour drive). For truly remote areas, can we, in an environmentally responsible way find other options than fly-in/fly-out, be that a daily train, a year-round access road etc etc.
Also, can we make sure there's a good High School for the kids, and some sort of amenities.
Addressing these issues certainly won't fix everything. If for no other reason than we have an absolute shortage of doctors and nurses in Ontario, even in Toronto, let alone remote places.
The answer to which, apart of attracting the right immigrants, and then actually recognizing their credentials, ahem............... is to have sufficient numbers of medical school spots and residence positions; which despite recent announcements, we remain short of....