Read the Column We can’t afford to lose people like Heather Gilchrist. Period. A midwife from Scotland, Gilchrist has over a decade of experience working in the UK, and was actively working in Victoria, B.C., but now faces imminent deportation. The reason? Basically, Immigration Canada (IRCC) thinks she can’t speak English. Setting aside the obvious fact that Gilchrist is a native English speaker, she actually wrote and passed a proficiency test, but delayed uploading the results because the IRCC website never gave her an option to do so. While B.C. Health Minister Josie Osborne has finally (after months of inaction) contacted the federal immigration minister for assistance, the vacuum already created by Gilchrist’s inability to work highlights a much bigger issue facing our health-care system. Simply put, Canada is facing a significant shortage of maternal care workers—and data suggests mothers and newborns are already paying the price. The journey through pregnancy and childbirth involves a number of health-care professionals: family doctors, nurses, anesthetists, and emergency care physicians, among others. However, an important measure of any health-care system’s ability to provide maternal care is the availability of midwives and obstetrician-gynecologists (OB-GYNs). Midwives like Heather are typically primary-care providers for low-risk pregnancies but may also work in hospitals on the day of delivery. According to data from the OECD, Canada ranks last among 23 countries for licensed midwives per capita. While troubling, this may not necessarily be a problem as some countries rely to a greater extent on OB-GYNs—i.e., specialist physicians usually involved in higher-risk pregnancies. However, data from the OECD indicate that Canada also ranks nearly last (33rd of 35) for the relative availability of obstetricians and gynecologists combined. In other words, Canada has a relative shortage of both midwives and OB-GYNs. Worse, many of the OB-GYNs we do have are resigning—sometimes en masse—in protest due to potentially unsafe work conditions that render them “unable to continue with in-hospital care.” One example of the consequences of staffing shortages is the story of Danielle Goward, a first-time mother who was transferred between four hospitals in British Columbia with a span of 12…​Read More