Foreign doctors take up more medical residency spots as Canadians struggle to get in | CBC News

Open more residency programs

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Canada has an acute shortage of doctors — a staffing crisis that is expected to get much worse in the years ahead as the number of residency positions on offer fails to keep up with rapid population growth.

But the medical schools that run residency programs still find room for foreign nationals from countries like Oman, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia — people who frequently have no intention of staying here to work over the long term.

Critics maintain that dismantling the foreign "visa trainee" program — which gives several hundred residency spots to non-Canadians — would free up positions so more homegrown doctors can work here in Canada and help chip away at the physician deficit.

While Canada is cutting loose some native-born and naturalized doctors who went to medical school overseas, hundreds of foreign trainees are routinely admitted to residencies here, despite an apparent scarcity of resources.

These foreign residents are not being permanently deployed to physician-starved rural and remote areas or hanging their shingles in a province like Nova Scotia — where 142,000 people, roughly 14 per cent of the population, are on a waiting list for a family doctor.

In 2010, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) implemented a policy, Bulletin 230, that exempted Canadian medical schools from conducting labour market impact assessments (LMIA).

The original article contains 1,403 words, the summary contains 210 words. Saved 85%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Med school seats reserved specifically for foreign nationals who can pay ridiculous sums of money (aka "Saudi Seats") need to be dropped as well...these exist purely for the financial gain of the university.