Health Committee on Nov. 27th, 2025

[Dr. Patricia Houston]

Women's College Hospital is one of the TAHSN hospitals.

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

It doesn't take a view on women's rights globally?

[Dr. Patricia Houston]

I have not recently reviewed whatever they have put out about this.

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

I have one last question. We received an email from a member of the University of Toronto medical faculty—

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have 16 seconds.

We will need the shortest answer possible.

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

—who wishes to remain anonymous because of fear of reprisal from the administration. He says that the impression of rank-and-file faculty is that the Saudi money is used to prop up the growing administrative structure and roles of the faculty rather than improving the training quality and experience of Canadian learners.

Is there a reason you can think of why he would want to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal?

[Dr. Patricia Houston]

I cannot.

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

We now go to the Liberals for the second round.

You have five minutes, please, Ms. Sidhu.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Dr. Houston, my question is about the shortage. We continue to hear that many specialties face persistent workforce shortages that impact on wait times and service access. The committee has heard from other witnesses that the internationally sponsored help address the health care workforce shortage. Can you expand on that?

[Dr. Patricia Houston]

Could you ask your question again?

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Some specialties have shortages. Persistent workforce shortages impact wait times in hospitals and service access. Can you expand on how the internationally sponsored help address this health care workforce shortage?

[Dr. Patricia Houston]

Well, they absolutely do provide significant service in the hospitals to our patients and to the health care system. Yes, at this time, each resident who is working in our system is contributing up to 50 or more hours per week of work that would otherwise have to be done. At this time, we have a crisis in human health resources. It would not be easy to backfill that.

That is why we all must be looking at how we increase the number of health care professionals—not just doctors, but health care professionals—to meet the needs of our communities.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Dr. Houston, you did talk about IMGs. One in three IMGs is a Canadian citizen or permanent resident returning home after studying abroad.

How can federal and provincial partners better support these Canadians who want to complete their residency training here? Also, you said that you have put forward a further expansion plan to the province. Can you expand on that?

[Dr. Patricia Houston]

Certainly.

Those IMGs—those are the Canadians and permanent residents who study abroad—are eligible to go through the IMG stream and match in the first iteration of the CaRMS matching system and then again in an unblended way, to go through the second match of the CaRMS matching system.

The way to increase their access to residency positions is to increase the number of residency positions. We have put forward to the government...we were given an additional 67 postgraduate medical residency positions in the expansion that occurred, and we could certainly take many more.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

The other thing I just want to highlight is budget 2025 introduced a $5-billion health infrastructure fund, including support for hospitals and medical schools.

How could this investment help expand training capacity and support the learning environment for the future physicians?

[Dr. Patricia Houston]

I think it can be used to build medical schools. I laud our provincial government for the two new medical schools in Ontario, at TMU and at York. It can be used to refurbish our medical schools, some of which have not had their physical structures addressed in decades. It can be used to build new hospitals and new research labs, because we can't just do the education, we must be doing the research and innovative work, as well, in order to not just increase the number of health care workers but to improve the health care system.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Thank you.

I also want to say that budget 2025 includes significant investment to attract international talent to Canada, including to support recruitment of international doctoral students and post-doctoral fellows and new support for universities.

You talked about TMU. I'm very pleased TMU in Brampton is getting $25 million, but how is the faculty of medicine planning to take advantage for the specialties, like some special doctors, because surgeries are not happening because there's a shortage—

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have one minute.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

—so, on the specialty side.

[Dr. Patricia Houston]

The funding, as I understand it, is to recruit scientists but many of those scientists are clinician scientists. Certainly as we look to who we recruit, it should be for those areas of science where we can best support them and where they are needed, and that often aligns with the clinical needs as well.

As well, we would be able to recruit post-doctoral and doctoral learners and fellows and, again, contribute to the rich science that is done by the University of Toronto and by Temerty Medicine, which has led to us being ranked in the top 10 in the world.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have 14 seconds.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

I'll pass it on.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you. That's good.

I'll go to Madame Larouche.

Ms. Larouche, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.