Ontario Premier Doug Ford said he doesn’t want foreign medical students who don’t end up working in Ontario to take up spots in the province’s medical schools.
At a press conference to announce the funding of a new medical school at York University, Ford said his “number one pet peeve” was foreign students leaving Ontario after getting a medical education.
“I want to support Ontario students,” he said. “God bless everyone else coming to our country. Someone from ABC country comes and pays a little more, and I understand that money pays for some of the local students.”
Ford pointed out that nearly one in five medical students in the province are from other countries.
“Get rid of the 18%. I’m not being mean, but I’m taking care of our students, our kids first,” he said.
According to the Ontario College of Family Physicians, 2.3 million Ontarians lack access to a family doctor.
Many Ontario students end up seeking their medical education abroad.
“These kids, and I talk to a lot of their parents, they have to go to Ireland, or they go down to the Caribbean, or they go to Australia, or they go down to the United States, and guess what happens? They meet someone, and they don’t come back home,” Ford said.
For the entering class of 2023 at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, 90% of the university’s medical students are from northern Ontario. The other 10% are from the rest of Canada, mostly in rural and remote areas.
The northern Ontario medical school, which has campuses in Thunder Bay and Sudbury, Ont., relies on tuition for 12% of its revenue and is currently lobbying the provincial government for $4 million in additional subsidies.
A representative from the university told True North that these averages have remained mostly the same since 2005.
The university’s selection process requires applicants to be Canadian citizens or permanent residents by the time of the application deadline for the year they wish to study. This is in contrast to Ontario’s other medical schools, which take applicants from around the world.
Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont. only accepts Canadian citizens and permanent residents into its medical school.
Admissions data from the university show 77% of its medical students are from Ontario, 17% are from western provinces, and 6% are from Quebec and eastern provinces.
In his Thursday press conference, Ford announced his government would invest $9 million in the new medical school at York University, which is expected to begin classes in September 2028.
