The House of Commons Standing Committee on Health (HESA) met on November 4, 2025, to study the impact of immigration on health care. Witnesses included Martin Johansen, Mayor of Oliver; Jodi Hall, CEO of the Canadian Association for Long Term Care; Deidre Lake, Executive Director of the Alberta International Medical Graduate Association; Linda Silas and Baljinder Singh from the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions; and Shazeen Suleman, a clinical associate professor from Stanford University.
Martin Johansen described frequent emergency department closures at South Okanagan General Hospital—30 in the past year—due to a shortage of physicians, with only one to two hours of notice given to the public. He noted that 40% of hospital staffing comes from outside the community and that unattached patients overwhelm the ER. He recommended streamlining credentialing for internationally educated health professionals already in Canada and supported a pan-Canadian licensure system to allow locums to work across provinces more easily, as well as exemptions from labour market impact assessments for health care workers.
Jodi Hall highlighted a shortage of 25,000 vacant positions in long-term care, with demand expected to nearly double by 2035 due to an aging population. She noted that 40% of temporary foreign workers are employed in long-term care and that recent changes to the temporary foreign worker program, including annual labour market impact assessment renewals, create administrative burdens. She recommended creating a health care-specific immigration pilot, a health care work permit exempt from labour market impact assessments, and prioritizing immigration processing for long-term care workers, and she supported standardized national licensure.
Deidre Lake reported that her organization serves 3,800 internationally trained physicians across Canada, many of whom face duplicative assessments, high costs, and inflexible rules such as residency requirements for residency matching. She advocated for competency-based assessments upon arrival, expansion of practice readiness assessment pathways, and removal of barriers like the requirement to retake exams annually. She disagreed with the characterization of the system as broken, arguing that proven best practices exist but need scaling, and supported national licensure.
Linda Silas stated that only 42% of internationally educated nurses in Canada work as nurses, citing fragmented licensure, high fees, unpaid placements, and discrimination. She recommended establishing a multi-stakeholder body led by Health Canada to coordinate registration and integration, standardizing registration processes across jurisdictions, and implementing mentorship and anti-bias programs to improve retention. She emphasized that workload and workplace culture are key drivers of the nursing shortage.
Baljinder Singh shared his personal experience of taking seven years to obtain his nursing licence in Canada, working in jobs such as at KFC and as an Uber driver, and having to get licensed in the U.S. first. He highlighted the need for clearer guidance and faster processing for internationally educated nurses.
Shazeen Suleman stressed that no child chooses to be an immigrant or refugee and that Canada is obligated under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child to ensure all children have access to health care, regardless of immigration status. She noted that many children cannot access care due to providers not accepting the interim federal health program, and that Quebec’s Bill 83, which provides public insurance to all children, is a model other provinces should follow. She also supported allowing qualified internationally trained clinicians to practise.
The committee debated and passed a motion to schedule a two-hour meeting with the Minister of Health and the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship together, and a separate meeting with departmental officials and other witnesses.
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