Nick Noorani Website

Knowing what doctors in Canada go through, I am always surprised when I meet yet another doctor immigrant, fresh with enthusiasm and no clue what awaits them. I wonder if I should be the one to break the dream bubble. I politely ask, “So what made you choose Canada?”
“When I visited the embassy, I was told there was a huge shortage of doctors and shown press clippings that spoke of the shortage. I thought this would be an ideal place to migrate to.”
What the “sales” team of officials representing Canada didn’t tell them was that it would take an eternity for them to practise medicine here, even if they passed the medical exams, because they have to also complete a necessary, but hard-to-get, residency — if they are lucky enough to get it at all!

Documentary filmmaker Jiyar Gol set out to find an answer in Health Care 911: The Plight of Immigrant Medical Doctors. The film features moving stories of immigrant doctors who work in security jobs and other dead-end positions. According to Patrick Coady, coordinator for the BC Internationally Trained Professionals Network, it could take an internationally trained medical graduate (IMG) (read doctor) anywhere from three to 10 years to get a residency. And here’s the amazing fact — only five per cent of these will ever get a residency. The rest spend their lives in dead-end jobs, loathing themselves and a system that has knowingly or unknowingly killed any chance of them being what they were before they came to Canada.
Canada recognizes medical degrees from Britain, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, but immigrants from these countries represent less than 10 per cent of the total immigrants coming to Canada. For the last few years, health care professionals have been struggling to communicate across language barriers with immigrant patients, particularly ageing parents who aren’t learning English. Why then are we not allowing the approximately thousand doctors who are here already to get their residencies faster? They come from China, India, Iran and other Middle Eastern countries. Exactly where the majority of immigrants come from!
Is there a bias? According to Dr. John Corey, whom we interviewed for a past article on this topic, “The old boys network in Canada is a well-known idea, whether you can prove it or not.”
A report presented by the Association of International Medical Doctors of British Columbia titled: Solutions to the Medical Doctor Shortage in B.C. says:
British Columbia has currently filled 16 of 18 available IMG residencies as of July 1st 2006 … Ontario has 200 IMG residencies and Alberta has 42. At least 600 foreign-trained doctors who have passed provincial medical exams in Ontario were unable to find space in medical schools in 2003; hundreds more cannot access training in order to successfully write exams. Clearly IMGs who live and work in Canada, want to raise their families here and contribute to the growth of the country are an untapped resource that can help address the current medical doctor shortage here in B.C.
It goes on to say that, each year, 10 per cent of B.C.’s IMGs who have completed the national standards exams in Canada go to the United States, other provinces or back to their home country.
I asked a doctor who has now been here for five years what he did by way of due diligence before immigrating; here’s what he said: “When the Government of Canada office tells me that there is a demand for doctors and when I get high numbers on the immigration point scale, why would I believe any other source? To tell me what I don’t want to believe?”
The role of the Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) visa offices should be to disseminate accurate labour market information to prospective immigrants, not to “’sell” them on migrating. We need more equity and transparency in the information process.
The CIC website states: “It is an offence under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to knowingly make a false or misleading statement in support of an application for permanent residence in Canada.”
Shouldn’t the requirement to not mislead go both ways?