Coming back to BC – Shuting door on doctors from foreign medical schools

Canadians who study medicine, even at the best medical schools in the world, face barriers and prejudice when they seek to return home to work in B.C. and rejoin their families.  

The government has allowed universities, instead of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, to choose who is granted entry-level training jobs as resident physicians. Canadian universities decided their graduates should receive the jobs. So they made the rules to prohibit international medical graduates from competing against their graduates.

A few residency training positions were created in an International Medical Graduate stream specifically for immigrant physicians after a 1999 human-rights case. Canadians who studied abroad are told they are entitled to compete for these few positions because they, as immigrant physicians, are international medical graduates. But barriers have been put in place to protect these jobs for immigrant physicians. So CSAs very rarely receive any of these IMG positions.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at Opinion: Canada shuts door on Canadian doctors who go to foreign medical schools.