Ontario's new residency rule dashes hopes of internationally trained doctor
- Elizabeth Payne
- Nov 18, 2025
- 2 min read
He was the cream of the crop of medical graduates in India. When he came to Ottawa, the geriatric specialist was left applying for jobs at Tim Hortons.
Published Nov 18, 2025
Ashok Kumar Biswas was working as a geriatric public health specialist in 2017 when he met a Canadian immigration official who encouraged him to apply to come to Canada.
The official said Canada needed doctors and the Indian physician had the kind of qualifications they were looking for, including two post-graduate specialist medical degrees, in geriatrics and public health, a decade of global experience and excellent English skills. His application, he was told, would be expedited as a skilled worker.
He came to Canada in 2019. Today, Biswas lives in Ottawa and is a proud Canadian citizen, but he is no closer to practicing medicine here. And after a recent change to the system that matches medical graduates to resident positions in Ontario, his dreams of doing so are fading.
After years of preparation, Biswas learned about the new eligibility criteria for internationally trained doctors in Ontario via email in early October while he was in the process of applying for residency opportunities. The system was already stacked against internationally trained physicians, with costly hurdles to overcome to compete for a small number of residency positions open to them. The recent change for those applying in Ontario, says Biswas, is the cherry on top of what was already a system in which discrimination against internationally trained doctors had been normalized.
