Thank you very much for your question. I will answer it in French.

Canada has 1,300 registered midwives right now, and this number is increasing very rapidly. Our profession is growing quickly, given that seven universities now offer midwifery education. They offer a bachelor's degree that can be completed in four years or even in four and a half years in some places. The training is very practical, providing midwifery students with many opportunities to work with pregnant women and babies.

Training programs are also offered in first nations communities, in general, and Inuit communities across Canada. Those few training programs are really tailored to the needs of aboriginal midwives. There is also a bridging program for midwives with training from abroad. Midwives from Europe, Latin America and the United States can benefit from a fast-track program and come to work in Canada. That is why the midwifery profession is growing quite significantly at the moment. We hope that it will double, or even triple, quite quickly.

In Canada, midwives are quite independent in their work in the sense that they practice their profession primarily outside hospitals. They are responsible for prenatal follow-ups and, after delivery, postnatal follow-ups, as well as normal deliveries by healthy women. Internationally trained midwives need to be retrained because the Canadian midwifery model of care is not used in all the countries. Therefore, midwives who come from abroad must often relearn this independence and develop sound clinical judgment to be able to work independently.

Our training programs are currently recognized internationally. They are considered the gold standard around the world for helping midwives develop independence and clinical judgment. More and more countries, where the training was not at university level or was not a four-year university degree, are trying to increase midwives' level of training to achieve a level comparable to the one we have here. In short, our Canadian midwives are extremely well trained.

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