Thank you.
Just one point of clarification: I'm not the CEO of CaRMS; I'm the general manager of CaRMS. I'm actually here pinch-hitting for Sandra Banner, who sends her regrets and was unfortunately unable to attend this meeting.
CaRMS is the gateway into post-graduate medical education in Canada. We hear on a daily basis the frustrations of international medical graduates and their concerns because we're an independent organization that sits on the fence between faculty and applicants for post-graduate training. So we do hear frustration, as Ali has expressed, from the thousands of IMGs across this land.
We've been matching eligible applicants to post-graduate medical training since 1970. This year is our fortieth anniversary. CaRMS has been serving the needs of IMGs and has been part of the system and in the matching process since day one, since 1970. The goal of our online electronic application service and matching service is to be completely transparent and accessible as a process. It's often misunderstood that CaRMS sets policies on recruitment. It's the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada, or AFMC, that sets these policies on how things are governed and how medical schools rank their applicants.
From 1994 until 2006 the AFMC only allowed Canadian medical graduates from their medical schools in the first iteration of our match. There are two iterations. The first fills as many vacancies as possible, and then leftover positions carry forward and there's a much shorter timeline for the second iteration. Up until 2006, only CMGs, or Canadian medical graduates, could participate in the first iteration. As of 2006, international medical graduates were also participating in the first iteration.
Since 2006, when the AFMC opened up their policy and allowed the schools to rank IMGs in the first iteration, most provincial Ministry of Health-funded positions for IMGs were in separate streams. Prior to 2006 CMGs were competing against IMGs for available positions in the second iteration. However, since 2006, when the IMGs were allowed in the first iteration of the match, most provinces have parallel streams. There are designated positions for IMGs in the first and second iteration of the matches, so Canadians are not competing with IMGs for these positions.
Since that time CaRMS has seen a dramatic increase in the number of IMGs participating in the match. In 2003 there were approximately 600 IMGs in our match. By 2007 the numbers had increased by more than 1,600, and have remained somewhat constant since that point; between 1,600 and 2,000 IMGs are participating in our annual residency year one match.
Since 2008 CaRMS has been the lead partner in an annual IMG information symposium. We recognize that IMGs are geographically dispersed. They don't have peers who are studying medicine with them, nor the ability to ask one another, as CMGs do, about what the match process is all about, what requirements are necessary regarding eligibility. So two years ago we organized the first annual international medical graduate symposium in Toronto.
We found that two-thirds of IMGs in this country are located within one hour of the greater Toronto area, which is very good for us to organize an annual event. Again, we had the Medical Council of Canada and Fleur-Ange's organization, FMRAC, involved, and about six or seven other organizations, including the Ministry of Health for Ontario, through HealthForceOntario. It's an opportunity for all our organizations to share information face to face with IMGs. Over 400 of them attend annually. But it's also a point for them to give us feedback, and the emotions are raw.
CaRMS also participated in the first annual IMG symposium held in Quebec this past year.
Early in this decade, CaRMS identified a subset of IMGs who were Canadians studying abroad, or as we refer to them, CSAs. They're defined as Canadian citizens or permanent residents who are studying medicine outside of Canada and in the U.S. Through a 2009-10 grant from Health Canada, CaRMS has been researching this group of Canadian students who elect to study medicine, and we've been studying them in more than 25 countries around the world.
I'll give you some statistics on international medical graduates. Our international medical graduate community includes CSAs or Canadians studying abroad. We do not differentiate between the two groups, so the CSAs are a subset of the IMG community.
CSAs represented 24% of the first-time IMGs participating in the match in 2008. In 2009 this number increased to 31% and in 2010 that number is now 40%. Again, we have approximately 1,600 to 2,000 IMGs participating in our annual match, and the number of matched IMGs in 2007 was 298, in 2008 it was 353, and in 2009 it was 392.
That's the end of my presentation.