The Ontario government will effectively bar international students from attending medical schools beginning in the fall of 2026, while also covering tuition for more than 1,000 students who commit to becoming a family doctor in the province.
Premier Doug Ford and Health Minister Sylvia Jones said Friday upcoming legislation will ensure at least 95 per cent of medical school spots will be reserved for residents of Ontario. The remaining five per cent will be for students from elsewhere in Canada.
The change will only represent a small shift in enrolment, as roughly 88 per cent of all medical school spots in Ontario are already held by residents of the province, a health ministry official said.
The official emphasized the pending change is not an outright prohibition on students from outside Canada because in the highly unlikely scenario that seats do go unfilled, medical schools could still admit international students.
The provincial government is also expanding a “Learn and Stay” program that covers tuition and other educational costs to include students who commit to practising family medicine in Ontario with a “full roster of patients.”
The grant program is expected to cost $88 million and be extended to 1,360 eligible undergraduate students. It will allow some 1.36 million more Ontarians to have access to a family doctor, according to Jones.
There are currently about 2.5 million people in the province without a family doctor, the Ontario Medical Association says. That number is expected to nearly double in coming years.
A study by the Canadian Institute for Health Information released on Thursday said 12 per cent of Ontarians do not have a family doctor.
Former health minister tasked with new role
It is an issue that has dogged the Ford government over the years, as the number of Ontarians without primary care has risen under its tenure.
This week, the province appointed former federal Liberal health minister Jane Philpott to a new role with a goal of connecting every Ontarian to primary care within the next five years.
“She’s going to be on the ground fixing that gap,” Ford said.
The Ontario government will effectively bar international students from attending medical schools beginning in 2026, while also covering tuition for more than 1,000 students who commit to becoming family doctors in the province. Dr. Cathy Risdon, chair of family medicine at McMaster University, says the number of international students in medical school is ‘not an issue in Ontario,’ adding that the changes are ‘distracting’ from the realities family doctors face.
The province is also expanding its health-teams model, which sees patients connect to clinics where they have access to physicians, but also nurse practitioners and other services like physical rehabilitation and mental-health care.
The province said it is reviewing the visa trainee program that trains international students sponsored by foreign governments, in an effort to further protect Ontario students.
Ford also pledged to help the current crop of medical students, several of whom were standing behind him as he spoke at an Oshawa hospital.
“I’m trying to backdate this for a year or two because I’m sure some of you have debt from medical school,” Ford said.
He looked to Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy, and added: “Can you hear that, Mr. Moneybags?”