Canada is struggling with physician shortages across the country and will need to recruit more doctors from overseas.

That’s according to a director of the national organization that oversees the medical education of specialists in Canada.Dr. Ken Harris, education director for the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, said a new interprovincial transfer agreement that allows doctors to move more freely across the country could intensify the departure of doctors in some parts of the country.

The warning comes in the wake of a 50 per cent increase in the number of doctors leaving New Brunswick since Canada’s provincial governments moved to reduce barriers to labour mobility.The province’s internationally-trained doctors are also fighting for the same mobility rights which they allege have been stripped away by the New Brunswick College and the provincial government to make sure they can’t practise elsewhere in Canada.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” Harris said. “If we increase mobility then will this make it more difficult for us to populate smaller, and I hesitate to use the word, but less desirable settings?As long as there are human resource shortages across the country and physicians are freely mobile, that allows them to go wherever they want and for that to happen.”

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