Canada’s Hidden Health Workforce Is Ready To Serve

By Mata Press Service

Canada is choosing immigrants for their skills, then blocking many of them from using those same skills when they arrive, says a new report that calls for federal action to break a decades-old licensing impasse.

The report by the Institute for Canadian Citizenship (ICC) says Canada has hundreds of thousands of trained newcomers working below their qualifications while the country struggles with doctor shortages, long health-care waits, construction backlogs and weak productivity.

The findings land hard in a country where 6.5 million people do not have access to a family doctor.

According to the ICC report, Ready to Contribute: How a Fair Licensing Act Can Put Immigrants’ Talents to Full Use for Canada, only 41 per cent of internationally trained physicians and 37 per cent of internationally trained nurses are working in their fields in Canada.

The report estimates that closing the overqualification gap between immigrants and Canadian-born workers could add roughly 16,000 doctors and 27,000 nurses and related professionals to the workforce, without increasing immigration levels.

It says the problem is costing Canada up to $50 billion a year in lost economic potential.

“Keeping qualified immigrant talent on the sidelines while Emergency Departments routinely close due to staffing shortages is an epic triumph of self-defeat,” said Daniel Bernhard, CEO of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship.

“Hand-picking immigrants because we need their skills and then refusing to put those skills to use is not just an act of bad faith, it’s an act of bad leadership that hurts all Canadians.”

The ICC report says nearly 640,000 degree-holding immigrants, or almost 26 per cent, are overqualified for their current jobs. That compares with about 11 per cent among Canadian-born workers.

The result is a familiar Canadian contradiction: trained physicians working as security guards, engineers driving ride-share vehicles and nurses doing warehouse shifts while hospitals and clinics plead for staff.

The report says the problem lies in Canada’s foreign qualification recognition system, known as FQR, which is supposed to assess foreign degrees, work experience and professional credentials against Canadian standards.

In practice, it has become a maze of regulators, fees, exams, delays and inconsistent rules.

Before a doctor trained in Egypt, an engineer trained in Brazil or a nurse trained in the Philippines can work in Canada, they must navigate requirements set by one of roughly 500 self-governing licensing bodies across provinces and territories.

The ICC says many of these systems were built to protect public safety, but too often they end up excluding qualified people for reasons unrelated to their ability to do the job safely.

One of the clearest examples is the so-called Canadian work experience requirement.

The report describes it as a catch-22: newcomers are told they need Canadian experience to get licensed or hired, yet they often cannot get that experience without first being licensed or hired.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission declared such requirements discriminatory in 2013, but the ICC says they remain common.

The barriers also carry heavy personal costs. Newcomers may be required to spend thousands of dollars on exams, document translation, registration fees and bridging programs. Some face long assessment timelines and unclear decisions. Others are forced to repeat language tests already completed as part of the immigration process.

For many immigrant families, the price is paid in stalled careers, depleted savings and lost years.

For Canada, the price is measured in emergency room closures, delayed surgeries, housing bottlenecks and lost productivity.

The report notes that the issue has been known for at least 60 years. A federal White Paper on Immigration raised the need for better mobility among professional and skilled workers in 1966.

Since then, governments have introduced frameworks, pilot programs and targeted reforms. The ICC says those efforts have failed to solve the problem because they rely too heavily on voluntary cooperation by provinces, regulators, employers and educational institutions.

The overqualification rate among immigrants has risen rather than fallen.

The ICC is calling for a federal Fair Licensing Act modelled on the Canada Health Act.

Under the proposal, Ottawa would set national fairness standards for professional licensing while respecting provincial jurisdiction. Provinces that remove barriers would receive a new Canada Fair Licensing Transfer. Provinces that fail to comply could lose funding.

The report also recommends tying other federal levers, including Provincial Nominee Program allocations, to progress on licensing reform.

A dedicated Fair Licensing Act division would be created within Employment and Social Development Canada, with an annual report to Parliament. A Fair Licensing Act Secretariat would also be established within the Forum of Labour Market Ministers to coordinate federal and provincial cooperation.

The system would measure results, including the share of internationally trained professionals licensed and working in their fields, the speed of assessment decisions, the removal of discriminatory Canadian experience requirements, better cross-provincial licensing standards and improved data on immigration, licensing and employment outcomes.

“The Canada Health Act shows the federal government can set national standards on matters of provincial jurisdiction and reward those who meet them,” Bernhard said.

“A Fair Licensing Act could do the same for licensing, in every profession and every province at once. Canada doesn’t need marginal improvements. We need a big change across the board, to put immigrant talent to work addressing the needs they were brought here to address.”

The report makes clear that the issue extends beyond health care.

Canada also faces a major skilled trades crunch as hundreds of thousands of workers near retirement. At the same time, the country needs to build more homes to restore affordability. Many newcomers with construction, engineering and technical backgrounds are already in Canada but remain stuck outside their professions.

Claudia Hepburn, CEO of Windmill Microlending, said the report captures the challenge facing skilled immigrants who seek Canadian accreditation and the need for a solution.

The ICC says the Fair Licensing Act would not remove the need for professional standards. It argues that licensing should be fair, fast, transparent and based on competence, rather than country of training, accent, name or the ability to survive years of costly re-credentialing.