WASTED SKILLS

Foreign-trained doctor in blue-collar job is no myth in Canada

Foreign-trained doctor isn’t treating patients. He’s sweeping floors,

Every evening after dinner, Naseem Ahmed Pasha would don his dress pants and dress shirt and say goodbye to his three boys, telling them he was leaving for work in the hospital. But when Pasha, who had been a family doctor back in India, got to his worksite, he would change into his uniform — the uniform of a security guard — for his 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift at a Toronto condominium, at $8.50 an hour. When Pasha arrived Canada in 2006 under the skilled immigrant program, he was confident he would soon be able to use his skills and contribute to this country in a meaningful way. Having earned a medical degree from the University of Mysore, he practised medicine in India and later in Saudi Arabia for 15 years. While working for two years as a security guard in Canada, he studied for and passed all the qualifying exams and had his credentials certified. Yet today, instead of treating patients, he’s sweeping floors and lifting heavy merchandise at a Toronto home improvement store, on survival wages. “It’s a very tough pill to swallow,” the 44-year-old told the Star, choking back tears. “I wasn’t prepared for this kind of job. But coming here, you have to survive and put bread on the table. “I didn’t tell my kids because I come from a culture where being a doctor is an honourable and noble profession. Now my status has dropped, doing blue-collar jobs. It would have a bad impact on my kids.” There are many highly educated and skilled immigrants like Pasha who find their skills being wasted and wonder why Ottawa isn’t investing more in the talent already present in this country. While physicians are among the most highly regarded professionals in the immigrant community, they’re also among those most likely to fail to find a way back into their field. (A Statistics Canada study found that 60 per cent of new immigrants failed to find work in the field they were trained for originally.) According to the Association of International Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, a self-advocacy group, there are more than 7,500 immigrant doctors in Ontario alone. About 2,000, like Pasha, have passed the exams but have been unable to secure the one thing they need to get back into the profession: a residency spot. This week, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney proposed a new policy requiring federal applicants who want to immigrate as skilled workers to have their foreign credentials assessed and verified before their arrival in Canada. That change is welcome, because it would give future migrants a better understanding of how their credentials will be measured against Canadian standards and help them hit the ground running. But immigrants already here and struggling fear they will be forgotten. Although the Conservative government has tripled its immigrant settlement budget since 2006, since 2010 it has been reducing its investment in newcomers’ programs such as language training and employment services, with Ontario particularly hard hit. The province has lost almost $75 million settlement funding, and further cuts are expected. To address the issue of wasted skills, Ottawa established the Foreign Credentials Referral Office in

“I don’t want to waste my skills. My parents made a lot of sacrifices for me to go through medical school.” NASEEM AHMED PASHA

2006. It’s meant to provide better licensing information to newcomers and to offer orientation sessions for approved immigrants before their arrival. The program is available in 25 countries.

So far, the credentials referral office has developed pan-canada assessment and recognition tools for eight occupations. Physicians are one of the six professions being targeted in 2012.

“Our government is building an immigration system that is focused on economic growth and ensuring that all Canadians, including immigrants, are able to contribute to their maximum capacity,” Kenney said.

In 2010, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario issued 3,708 postgraduate training certificates to physicians in residency training and practice certificates to others, including 636 international medical graduates. A spokesperson for Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews said the province’s latest budget will maintain the level of funding — $42 million — for international medical graduates in the system.

“The government is not reducing the number of international medical graduate learners or the number of residency positions,” the spokesperson said.

However, Mitra Arjang, of the Association of International Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, said those international graduates are mostly made up of Canadian-born graduates from overseas medical schools. “Residency program directors prefer residents to be young, to be familiar with the Canadian culture as much as possible. Immigrant doctors are real doctors. They are just too qualified,” said Arjang, adding that only a small number of those selected for the international residency program are actual immigrant doctors.

It should be viewed as a healthcare issue, Arjang argued, when qualified physicians are prevented from practicing while there’s a shortage of physicians that forces patients to wait for medical procedures and live without a family doctor. The real solution, she added, is to offer transitional licences for international trained physicians to work in a supervised environment to prove themselves.

“I don’t want to waste my skills. My parents made a lot of sacrifices for me to go through medical school. Canada must invest in skilled immigrants. It is good for us. It is good for Canada,” said Pasha, who has twice tried and failed to secure a residency spot, and is making a third attempt.

“I applied for a job as a ‘medical messenger’ to deliver drugs, but I’m not even good enough to deliver drugs.”