I visited Ottawa, Kingston, Hamilton, London and Toronto in the past few months, and the three-member recruitment team from the small Ontario town of Cornwall has unveiled an alarming revelation.
The revelation was there is an acute shortage of medical doctors. Hold it. This isn’t new, we’ve known this for years. An articel in a newspaper on the same subject more than 10 years ago talked about doctor shortage.
The report said Cornwall is not the only town or city in dire straights for physicians. This city needs four to six family doctors immediately. Ontario in fact is in need of 3,000 new doctors.
Quebec is a close second. It also needs as many doctors. The media has been reporting the shortage of doctors but nothing is happening. The situation is getting worse.
However, very little is being done to train more doctors or to recruit more foreign trained doctors to Canada.
The number of doctors per capital in Canada will decline by 2015 and without more foreign-trained doctors Canada is in trouble. We cannot possibly keep ahead of the pace for need. The Fraser Institute has a solution but it may be too late. They suggest increasing the number of spots for qualified Canadian students is a better solution. Provincial governments have reduced medical school enrollments and post-graduate training programs since 1993 for various reasons. The need for a national change in policy for International Medical doctors is becoming ever more apparent. We can expect change with the implementation of FMRAC.