Thank you so much. I'm finished.
Evidence of meeting #13 for Health in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was immigration.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #13 for Health in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was immigration.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Maggie Chi Liberal Don Valley North, ON
Thank you.
Thank you to all the witnesses for joining us today. My questions are for Dr. Nickerson. I have a couple of clarification questions.
Who decides the number of medical school seats and residency positions? Can you quickly go through that?
Past Board Chair and Dean, Max Rady College of Medicine, University of Manitoba, Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada
Sure. That's approved by the Ministry of Advanced Education of the Manitoba government.
Liberal
Maggie Chi Liberal Don Valley North, ON
Thank you.
As you noted before, visa resident trainees are only accepted after all provincially funded residency positions for Canadians have been filled. Then, the provinces are explicitly asked whether they want to fund these remaining positions. If a province declines to fill the leftover spots and the visa trainee pays to train, does that take anything away from a Canadian graduate?
Past Board Chair and Dean, Max Rady College of Medicine, University of Manitoba, Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada
No. In fact, we've had discussions with the provincial governments around having visa trainees. They want to make sure we're not taking visa trainees in spots where we have an urgent need to train individuals who will stay in Manitoba.
Liberal
Maggie Chi Liberal Don Valley North, ON
If a province did want to fund those leftover positions for, say, a Canadian graduate, they could—meaning that visa trainees only ever access unclaimed capacity. Is that correct?
Past Board Chair and Dean, Max Rady College of Medicine, University of Manitoba, Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada
Right. We fill all 190 of our seats. We still have some visa trainees in the province, but they are not dependent upon those seats being empty. It's a matter of whether the system has the capacity to accommodate them within the health care system. The home country pays for the training.
November 20th, 2025 / 1:10 p.m.
Liberal
Liberal
Marcus Powlowski Liberal Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON
Dr. McAdoo, I started to get into this question. Maybe it's the Medical Council of Canada. It was the head of the Medical Council of Canada who told me about this. I thought there was some informal group of the various bodies that are involved in establishing practice-ready assessments. In some provinces, that's the college of physicians and surgeons. In other provinces, it's an independent body. In other places, it sounds like it's teaching hospitals. Are you trying to set national standards for practice-ready assessments?
Chief Executive Officer, Physician Assessment Centre of Excellence
Yes, it is through the Medical Council of Canada that the groups voluntarily get together.
Standards were developed quite a few years ago for certain disciplines for practice-ready assessment programs, but I would leave it to the Medical Council of Canada to describe what they have—
Liberal
Marcus Powlowski Liberal Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON
Our government has committed a fair bit of money towards helping foreign-trained health care workers get credentialed in Canada. It would seem to me—and you could make this recommendation—that we could put money into having a more formal organization of bodies that would administer practice-ready assessments.
The other thing I'd heard was that there was some interest in having a national match so that physicians coming into Canada could, rather than applying to each province, have a CaRMS kind of process whereby there would be just one place to put in their applications, and then the various provinces could choose the people they would bring in. Would you be in favour of creating that kind of match?
Chief Executive Officer, Physician Assessment Centre of Excellence
I haven't considered that before, but making it more accessible to more people would be a reasonable way to go.
I forget what the first question was. You had a two-part question.
Liberal
Marcus Powlowski Liberal Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON
It was just about a national match. I would have thought that a national match would be desirable.
Chief Executive Officer, Physician Assessment Centre of Excellence
Yes. Having access to the information so that international-trained physicians would not have to replicate applications would definitely be valuable.
Liberal
Marcus Powlowski Liberal Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON
Finally, Dr. Nickerson, I think Manitoba is the only province that has this one-year bridging program to kind of scale up the skills and the knowledge of foreign-trained physicians.
Are you the only province, and would you suggest that this could be a place to put money into dealing with this problem? Perhaps it would be good to put federal money into helping to create similar kinds of institutions in other provinces.
Past Board Chair and Dean, Max Rady College of Medicine, University of Manitoba, Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada
Yes, we are the only ones in the country who have this program. It's been highly effective. We've seen the individuals graduate out of the program and we've not seen complaints by patients afterwards from the college. Also, we know that 75% of those individuals stay in Manitoba and practise long term.
Liberal
Marcus Powlowski Liberal Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON
Just formally, would you recommend this as a good model that other provinces may want to follow?
Past Board Chair and Dean, Max Rady College of Medicine, University of Manitoba, Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada
Yes, we think it's leading edge. It should be recommended nationally.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you to the witnesses for staying through this. It was fortuitous, actually, that you stayed and we could bring you back.
Thank you, everyone. I now adjourn this meeting—
Conservative
