Premier Greg Selinger is optimistic a significant number of this years graduating class of medical students from the University of Manitoba will find their way to rural communities across the province. This was one of the largest graduating classes with 107 students completing their studies at the U of M's Faculty of Medicine.

"Of that number 77 of them will be doing their residency in Manitoba, 34 of that 77 are moving forward with their studies in family medicine and 19 out of those are looking at a residency in rural and northern Manitoba," said Selinger. "Another grad is looking at doing a specialty, anaesthesiology, in Brandon, so we continue to graduate more students through the school, and we're continuing to recruit more students from rural Manitoba who have an interest in returning to rural Manitoba."

The province is funding more than 600 medical residents throughout Manitoba and is providing a variety of incentives for physicians to set up their practice in rural communities.

Meanwhile, the premier is hailing a vote this week by the U.S. House Agriculture Committee to repeal the American government's Country of Origin Labelling (COOL) policy. The committee made the move after the World Trade Organization ruled for the fourth time in favour of Canada and Mexico that the American position on COOL was an infraction of international trade law. Selinger says it will be nice to see an end to the discriminatory practice.

"I can tell you that there are many organizations such as the packing houses in the U.S. that want to have access to our pork and beef and make it available to their customers," said Selinger. "I'm glad the House Committee on Agriculture has responded and that the WTO has stayed consistent in ruling COOL as illegal under our trade agreements and we have got to move forward on this now."

The Premier says COOL legislation has cost livestock producers in Canada up to $600 million annually and put a lot of stress on beef and pork producers.

Selinger made these comments for the Premier's Report' which airs every Friday at 11:45 am on Cjrb rADIO 1220, or you can hear it anytime on our CJRB Blog at discoverwestman.com.