Letters to the Editor
1 Yonge Street
Toronto ON M5E 1E6
14 January 2000

Your article, Premier threatens MDs with license ban of 13 January is the latest in a series of articles that highlight symptoms of a grossly under-resourced health care system. Since Dr McKendry’s fact-finding report for the province was released in late December, the stories have been consistent; there are not enough doctors to meet even the basic health care needs of Ontario.

Certainly, the solution to this crisis does not lie in the punitive measures proposed by the Premier. In fact, this is a red herring. He is deflecting attention away from the fact that the province will not commit to making the current health care system work.

According to McKendry’s report, Ontario needs at least 1000 more doctors. The option of increasing medical school enrollment does not nearly address the urgency of the current crisis. On December 3, 1999, approximately 275 international medical graduates wrote the competitive IMG exam in Ontario to gain entry to the now 36 places allotted to them. To be eligible even to write the exam, they had to pass the Medical Council of Canada’s Evaluating Exam first. The IMG program does not admit everyone who meets or exceeds the standards set, but rather functions to keep doctors out of Ontario – an arbitrary gate keeping mechanism. It was designed in the 1980’s to restrict the numbers allowed into Ontario during a period when it was feared that there would be too many doctors.

Why is the province holding on to a system that has no relevance with the current demand? Why will hundreds of doctors who want to work in Ontario, and who are willing to go to under-serviced areas be turned away? Why is the province ignoring the economic benefit of so many doctors who offer over $100,000 worth of university education each? Surely this is not a common sense solution.

Could it be then, that the system is being allowed to deteriorate? Perhaps this government does not in fact then have a real interest, or any interest, in seeing quality public health care survive in Ontario.

Muhammad Rafiq
Chair, Association of International Physicians & Surgeons of Ontario
(Formerly, Foreign Trained Doctors’ Association)