The current circumstances demand that we try harder to address the incontestable reality that is systemic racism. In this issue, we would like to pose the question: what role can professional training and academic education play in preparing museum professionals to counter values, practices and systems that perpetuate racism in our cultural institutions?
We spoke to Megan Sue-Chue-Lam, Chloé Houde, Dominica Tang, and Denise Tenio, who in February 2019 created the Museum Professionals of Colour (MPOC). Together, they are a student-run organization at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information aimed at addressing the lack of racial diversity within their Master of Museum Studies program (MMSt). In this interview, they talked to us about their journey, their work, and their vision for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA) in museums.
[Above image: Detox Panel held in partnership with the Museum Studies Student Association. Wendy Ng, J’net Ayay Qwa Yak Sheelth, and Just John Samuels.]
Why did you create Museum Professionals of Colour (MPOC)?
Megan: The museum field in Canada, which includes our program, is predominantly white. I wanted to talk to other POCs in our program because I was feeling really isolated in our classes and unsure about whether they would really prepare me for my career as a non-white person. I say POCs because the Black and Indigenous representation is extremely slim, and not everyone wanted or was able to be involved in this group. The camaraderie between all our peers is quite good, but the content and facilitation of our classes is emphatically white and Eurocentric. All of our professors are white and being a BIPOC museum professional is not something that they can advise on. So, feeling a sense of connection, validation, and support was my main motivation.
The other (reason) was that I wanted to create a group in order to make our own network of BIPOC museum professionals, in order to ensure that future BIPOC students in the program wouldn’t have to go through the same sense of isolation. And now, having heard from BIPOC alumni, it really seems like this is something that a lot of students have been wanting. Ultimately, we want to see ourselves in the museum field because we really do believe in what museums are able to accomplish.
Is there any precedent for this type of student association?
Dominica: There was a casual support group for students of colour in the MMSt program a few years ago, but it dissolved once the members graduated. To ensure that future museum studies students of colour would have a structure of support, we decided to put down roots in the school and register as a ratified UofT student organization. Globally, there are a number of large and independent organizations that interrogate the lack of diversity in museums. One that we looked to was Museum Detox, an independent organization that supports Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic museum professionals, as a model for what we aspire to be in Canada.
Denise: In Canada, however, most DEIA committees are formed within a specific museum by their staff and work exclusively within their institution. We have yet to see an organization dedicated to DEIA in our Canadian museums; if you know of one, please send them our way! Within the Faculty of Information, we have found support in our Master of Information counterpart, the Diversity Working Group.
Megan: We are also limited by the lack of diversity in our group, which is telling of the general state of our program and the field. We are not Black, nor are we Indigenous, and we do not presume to speak on behalf of Black or Indigenous peoples. We aim to use our light-skinned and white privilege and platform to amplify others who speak from their own experiences. While we engage with perspectives outside of our own through our initiatives, we understand that this is not enough to create a fully inclusive environment. We truly hope that future MPOC committees at UofT can surpass our own capabilities and provide wider representation than we do.
This is a new initiative: what has the process been like so far?
Chloé: Overall, this process has been a whirlwind (a good one), through which we’ve discovered that the issues we want to tackle in our faculty are present on a much larger scale across Canadian museums.
We’ve been lucky to find ourselves in an environment with supportive peers and fellow student groups who believe in what we are striving for. Our program’s Museum Studies Student Association supported us from the start; they brought us in to collaborate on a panel, which was our first big event. In March, we co-hosted the panel, entitled “Museum Detox: Cleansing institutions of unconscious bias and developing anti-racist praxis”. Our incredible panelists were Wendy Ng, J’net Ayay Qwa Yak Sheelth, and Just John Samuels. This event helped us establish MPOC as a serious student group at the Faculty of Information and put us on the faculty’s radar.
We’ve also found support and collaboration with other DEIA-minded student groups in our faculty, such as the Accessibility Interests Working Group, the Diversity Working Group, and the Indigenous Connections Working Group. We have similar goals and it’s been empowering to work with these groups on multiple projects over the last few months, and know that we can present as a united front when faced with difficulties.
Social media has been another way for us to find like-minded and supportive people and expand our horizons as a group. It’s been amazing to find a community outside of our faculty who believe in our mission and values and want to help us make the museum sector in Canada more inclusive and equitable.
What data can you share with us about DEIA in your program, or in the museum sector?
Dominica: We can’t provide much data on the museum sector because there aren’t any comprehensive studies coming out of Canada! In a field that champions tangible data over lived experiences, the lack of data is a hindrance to DEIA work in Canadian museums. Around one in six (approximately 17%) people in our program is a visible minority. Compared to Toronto’s 51% visible minority population, our program is disproportionately white and does not reflect the diversity of Toronto at all.
Denise: Recently, we collected data from 125 Faculty of Information students and alumni to identify the extent of DEIA in the school. This was a collaborative effort with other student groups, namely the Diversity Working Group, Accessibility Interests Working Group, Indigenous Connections Working Group, the Master of Information Student Council, and the Museum Studies Student Association. From our pool of 125 respondents, we found that: (1) less than 30% of respondents feel supported by peers and professors, (2) less than 4% of respondents agree that there aren’t enough courses on BIPOC, LGBTQ2S+ and disabled experiences; (3) less than 1% of respondents feel that classroom conversations on colonization, use of racial language, and accessibility needs are facilitated properly; (4) only 14% of respondents feel comfortable participating in these conversations; and (5) 86% of respondents agree that staff and students would benefit from anti-oppression training. These findings from the faculty include, but are not exclusive to, the MMSt program.
Lack of diversity at cultural institutions is a long-standing issue. What kind of academic training could contribute to solving this problem? What role can museum professionals play?
Chloé: We believe that addressing issues in museums needs to begin where museum professionals are being trained, and consist of more than theoretical discussions about our future workplaces. To this end, we’ve been striving to diversify our faculty on multiple levels. First, the student body needs to be more diverse, and it is the faculty’s responsibility to recruit and admit more BIPOC students. Second, the hiring of BIPOC staff and faculty would make an important difference as well. However, to avoid tokenization and harmful work and learning environments, the faculty also needs to develop a culture of inclusivity and equity in which BIPOC staff and students can flourish, in order to mitigate racism or discrimination. Third, diversifying our course offerings and our syllabi is something we greatly hold to heart, so that we can have a well-rounded education that will actually help us in our future careers.
Megan: But as much as academic training can create a good foundation for action, it really comes down to that – action. All the training in the world won’t amount to anything unless it’s used to actually make space and amplify marginalized voices. The work is hard, and will require people to sacrifice their sense of comfort and security, but really showing up for people means shouldering some of the burden of the fight they’ve been taking on their entire lives. This can mean challenging people on their racism when BIPOC aren’t in the room, letting BIPOC take the lead on projects and supporting their work, even stepping down from a position if you notice that your leadership team is mostly white or non-Black and non-Indigenous.
Chloé: To echo what Megan said, these kinds of actions are how institutional racism can be tackled and eradicated. This type of work is just the start, and is not a list of items on a checklist. It is a process that needs to be constant, ongoing, and present in everything we do, in theory and practice.
What do you envision for MPOC?
Denise: We have two main goals for MPOC right now that we’ll really be striving for throughout the entire upcoming school year. First, we want to ensure that MPOC continues to live on at the faculty even after we’ve graduated the MMSt program. As mentioned before, this organization is foremostly a support group for museum professionals of colour. Founding MPOC has helped us not only have a voice to speak out against the systemic racism that exists within the museum sector and in our program, but it’s allowed us to feel more seen and heard than we did prior to MPOC forming. We want future BIPOC students to experience that same level of support and visibility during their time as an MMSt student. And once they graduate, they know they’ll have a community they can turn to for guidance in navigating this field as a marginalized museum professional.
Dominica: Our second goal is to establish ourselves as an independent organization outside of the UofT structure. We’re extremely passionate and committed to the work we’ve been doing and definitely want to continue with MPOC after graduating our program next year. We want to expand this group nationally and, through delivering programs, events, and other campaigns, we hope to create a larger network of support for museum professionals of colour across Canada. We still have many things to think about, but we draw a lot of our inspiration from Museum Hue and Museum Detox, as well as other organizations like archive and library associations who have chapters across different schools. That’s something we’d like to do as well – set up chapters of MPOC within the various museum studies programs throughout Canada.
What do you envision for yourselves as museum professionals?
Dominica: Ideally, DEIA work would be a perspective that everyone uses in all museums and across all aspects of museum work. Whatever we end up doing, whether it be collections management or visitor research, our work will always relate to DEIA. I enjoy working in the public-facing sector of the museum particularly in immersive and multisensory programming. At the moment, this takes the form of historic cooking, but I hope to employ multisensory experiences as a means to make museums more empathetic, inclusive, and accessible.
Megan: I also enjoy frontline museum work, and my background and where I envision myself is in education and public programming. That’s typically where you see the most direct community engagement, which is very rewarding, and it’s where a lot of BIPOC museum workers find themselves. Unfortunately, we’ve seen through COVID that these positions are also some of the most expendable. That’s why DEIA is crucial to all aspects of museum work. The way museums are run isn’t equitable, and BIPOC remain on the margins. We really need to see more BIPOC in leadership and executive positions in order for real change to happen.
Denise: While I also really enjoy public programming, I see myself pursuing a career in interpretive planning and being more involved in the exhibition development process. For those who don’t know what interpretive planners do, if curators provide the information, interpretive planners organize that information to create a storyline and figure out how to effectively communicate it to the audience. When planning an exhibition, interpretive planners have to ask themselves questions like: Whose stories are we telling? Whose stories are not being included? From whose voices are these stories being told? Is this information/text/strategy accessible for all? That said, DEIA is so intrinsic to this type of museum work.
Chloé: Just like Denise, I am also interested in interpretive planning when it comes to museum work. I have an appreciation for collections management, but I believe interpretive planning and its focus on how visitors learn and retain information is where I see myself in the future. As mentioned by Denise, DEIA work is central to interpretive planning, and should be central to all museum work. I also have a love for oral history and believe it to be an underutilized methodology in museums; the values intrinsic to oral history (like sharing authority) can greatly help museums create lasting bonds with community members and make museums places where people see their histories valued and taken care of. As a white woman, it is my responsibility to constantly work towards anti-racism in myself and everything I do.
Meet Canoo member Violeta. She chose to move to Canada for the “natural beauty, mountains and lakes, as well as because of the strong economy and plenty of business opportunities.”
What Violeta loves most about Canada is the “people, the diversity, friendliness, and last but not least – poutine!” Her favourite place in Canada is Banff National Park in Alberta.
The best place that Violeta has visited using her Canoo app has been the Montreal Science Center, which she visited with her family. “Everyone in the family is interested in doing simple experiments and hands-on activities, and the center offers plenty of those,” she says. “The exhibitions we saw were amazing and entertaining both for kids and adults. Before we knew it, we spent almost three hours there and when we left we felt like there is so much more to see. Awesome place!”
For Violeta, active citizenship is “contributing to society by being kind and respectful, taking care of the environment, helping others and making a positive difference whenever presented with the opportunity.” She believes that cultural spaces help us build more diverse and inclusive societies: “Cultural places give us another perspective,” she says, “They help us see the world through the eyes of others; it is a way for us to remember the past and all the lessons it holds.”
“I have had a very positive experience using Canoo,” says Violeta, “Having the chance to visit all these places (some of which I probably wouldn’t have visited without the Canoo pass) is definitely expanding my horizons.”
COVID-19 has prompted wide-ranging physical distancing ticketing measures across the country, with over $5.8 million in coronavirus-related fines reported by May of this year. Some fines, like those in Saskatchewan, are as high as $2,000, while in other provinces, like Newfoundland and Labrador, violations can even result in jail time.
Advocates rang alarm bells early, warning that physical distancing enforcement could have a negative impact on marginalized groups, including low-income people or those experiencing homelessness who are unable to pay fines, new Canadians with language barriers, or members of Black communities, who are disproportionately affected by police violence.
In Ottawa, a 21-year-old refugee from Syria with limited English language skills was fined $880 for allowing his younger sibling to climb on playground equipment in a park while otherwise observing physical distancing rules. In Hamilton, a man experiencing homelessness was fined the same amount for sitting near a group of people outside a health centre.
Evidence suggests that fines have not been meted out equally. In late May, a large crowd of thousands of people, most of whom appeared to be white, gathered at Trinity Bellwoods Park in Toronto. Despite thousands of park-goers being in close proximity to each other, Toronto police issued only four tickets that day.
Disparities in how physical distancing fines are enforced are even more clear in the United States, where race-specific data related to policing is more robust. In New York City, about 80 per cent of fines were handed out to Black or Latino New Yorkers. According to a ProPublica study of three court districts in Ohio, Black residents were “at least four times as likely to be charged with violating the stay-at-home order as white people.”
In Canada, over-policing and discriminatory practices against Black Canadians have also been a long-standing problem. One recent example is the discriminatory “carding” policies used by law enforcement in Toronto which unfairly targeted Black residents.
Carding, which has since been banned, allowed law enforcement to stop and confront any resident and collect their information, and resulted in the racist mistreatment of Black Torontonians. A 2014 analysis by the Toronto Star found that — despite only being about 8 percent of the city’s population — approximately 27 percent of all carding incidents in Toronto after July 2013 involved Black people.
Carding is just one of the many ways Black Canadians have been targeted by police. A 2018 report from the Ontario Human Rights Commission found that “between 2013 and 2017, a Black person in Toronto was nearly 20 times more likely than a white person to be involved in a fatal shooting by the Toronto Police Service.” The report also showed that “Black people were over-represented in use of force cases (28.8%), shootings (36%), deadly encounters (61.5%) and fatal shootings (70%).”
The Ontario government’s recent physical distancing enforcement measures allow police to stop anyone they perceive to be in violation of the COVID-19 emergency orders, which the Canadian Civil Liberties Association directly compares to carding. “At best, this new Order is reckless and dangerous. At worst, it could be seen as a bald attempt to re-animate carding and re-populate a database with information about the residents of this city, and in particular, individuals who are racialized, Indigenous, homeless, have mental-health issues, or are otherwise marginalized,” wrote Noa Mendelsohn Aviv, the organization’s director of equality.
While Black communities tend to be over-policed, they also tend to be under-resourced and lower-income, with many people working in low-wage jobs (many of which are now deemed “essential”). This makes it more likely they will be outside of their home where they are vulnerable to encounters with law enforcement.
Any interaction with police can be risky, but a pandemic adds an additional layer of risk because it puts individuals in close contact with potentially infected officers. Police in Toronto and across Canada have reported positive cases of COVID-19 among officers. In New York City, that number has reached more than 1,400 cases among NYPD employees.
Not only are measures like these dangerous and racially biased, criminologists have cast doubt on the effectiveness of fines when it comes to enforcing physical distancing, arguing that they rely too much on blaming individuals in order to change widespread behaviour. But what experts can agree on is that widespread testing and contact tracing — rather than unfairly targeting marginalized groups — is the key to curbing the spread of COVID-19.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, many people have been spending less time socializing and a lot more time staying at home glued to their digital devices. The act of obsessively checking the latest news updates during coronavirus has even garnered its own term: “doomscrolling.”
But consuming more information doesn’t necessarily result in being better informed. A 2019 report from the Digital Democracy Project studying misinformation in election coverage in Canada found that consuming high amounts of news through social media or traditional news outlets was also associated with higher levels of misinformation. For media to be as effective and accurate as possible, it also needs to be of high-quality and backed by strong reporting that includes perspectives that represent the full breadth of Canadian experiences.
We’ve already discussed the importance of fact-checking and the need to prevent harmful stereotypes when consuming news, but how can media structures themselves change to ensure their reporting is as accurate as possible?
One solution is to begin effectively addressing the issue of diversity in Canadian media. When it comes to COVID-19, diversity in how stories are sourced and reported helps to make sure all communities are being represented and served by health authorities. As it stands, Canadian media still has a long way to go.
Currently, very few recent metrics measuring diversity in Canadian media exist, and many news organizations have been unwilling to share their own data. In 2016, Canadaland reached out to 18 newspapers across the country asking them to participate in a diversity survey. Only three news organizations agreed.
What little information we do know shows that Canadian media is overwhelmingly white. A 2019 Ryerson University study found that white op-ed columnists were overrepresented in Canadian media outlets relative to the population of Canada, and that the gap had increased over time. An earlier 2004 study of 37 Canadian daily newspapers found that “racial minorities are more than five times underrepresented in daily newsrooms” across all sections.
Fighting misinformation also means allowing diverse voices to tell their stories in their own terms. Toronto-based filmmaker Sherien Barsoum is a founding member of the Racial Equity Media Collective (REMC), tasked with advocating for BIPOC media creators. REMC works mostly in film, documentary, and television, where BIPOC creators may face barriers when trying to break into the industry. “Newsrooms and boardrooms and executive suites are sadly not filled with diverse voices. They are overwhelmingly homogenous. And, you know, I think that means that we often get stories that are repeated and that are told from just a handful perspectives,” says Barsoum.
Diversity needs to extend beyond the journalists who tell the stories, and also include the experts, researchers, and community members interviewed for the stories themselves. When it comes to COVID-19, drawing from diverse sources at the reporting level will provide more accurate insight into what is happening on the ground.
Early-on in the pandemic, before the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention was tracking the racial disparities of COVID-19 infection rates, Black doctors raised concerns that communities of colour were not being given adequate testing and treatment. They turned out to be entirely correct: data now shows that Black and Hispanic people in the United States are disproportionately affected by COVID-19.
Black writers were also at the forefront of highlighting these issues. CityLab writer Brentin Mock laid out the long history of racist beliefs behind the myth that Black Americans were somehow immune to COVID-19. Back in April, Ibram X. Kendi, an author and the director of the Antiracist Research & Policy Center, wrote in The Atlantic about the need for more data on the demographics of COVID-19 infections and deaths in order to understand the “racial pandemic within the viral pandemic.”
More diverse newsrooms make it less likely that perspectives like these fall through the cracks. The Canadian Association of Black Journalists and Canadian Journalists of Colour have recommended increasing “representation and coverage of racialized communities by hiring more editors and reporters of colour,” in a recent list of calls to action for increased diversity in Canadian newsrooms. “A more diverse news team translates into more diverse coverage,” the organizations stated.
There are some signs of change. The media landscape’s shift to digital has, in some ways, made it possible for a greater plurality of voices to come to the fore through a variety of methods, like making it possible for writers to grow their audience through Twitter or using online resources to connect to new opportunities. The recent worldwide protests surrounding racist police violence have also had an effect, forcing media publications to have difficult conversations about the diversity of their staff and how they report on race.
“I actually am really hopeful,” says Barsoum, citing promising progress in the media’s view on how diversity can add to their programming. “It’s not just essential so things become better for people of colour, it’s for all of us — we all benefit. It makes for a more human experience of the world.”
On March 17, the International Organization for Migration and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees announced that, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, any travel related to refugee resettlement would be suspended, including government-sponsored and privately-sponsored refugees to Canada.
The suspension of resettlement, along with stay-at-home orders and border shutdowns, have important ramifications for refugees who, by definition, have been forced to leave their home countries to find safety. With many refugees remaining displaced for years in camps or urban settings, resettlement is a vital tool that allows families and individuals to find stability in a new country. Canada, a global leader in resettlement, was set to bring in over 30,000 refugees in 2020. However, there have been less than 10,000 refugees resettled worldwide so far this year.
Though some right-wing outlets have suggested that refugees pose too much of an economic burden, research suggests that countries tend to actually benefit economically once refugees are resettled. Not only that, but Canada may be ignoring its international obligations by turning away asylum seekers who arrive at the border seeking safety.
Earlier policies in response to COVID-19 barred entry to all refugee claimants attempting to come to Canada, but a more recent policy has allowed for certain exceptions: some claimants can enter Canada from the United States at official border crossings before being made to quarantine for fourteen days in hotel rooms reserved by the Canada Border Services Agency. This exemption only applies under specific conditions, such as when claimants have close family in Canada or face the death penalty in their home country.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic began, asylum claimants were also able to enter at unauthorized border crossings, such as the Quebec-New York crossing at Roxham Road, and make an asylum claim once in Canada. Now, those entering at unauthorized border crossings are being turned away and sent back to the U.S. where they risk being deported back to their home country.
The Canadian Council for Refugees has called the new ban “wrong and unnecessary,” and Amnesty International has said that the measure violates the rights of refugees seeking safety, citing Canada’s obligations under the UN’s 1951 Refugee Convention. Advocates have even argued that the Canadian government could face legal consequences for violating “non-refoulement,” the principle that individuals cannot be returned to a country where they will face persecution or torture.
Reverend Scott Jones, the executive director of Micah House, a refugee shelter in Hamilton, Ont., says he’s seen a noticeable reduction in the number of referrals his organization handles, from between 60 and 70 in a typical month to between five and 10 since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Micah House offers short-term stays to refugee and asylum claimants, as well as assisting them with resettlement and connecting them to other services.
But services for refugees and asylum seekers who are already in Canada have also been restricted. The Canadian government has instructed resettlement service providers to only “focus on providing critical settlement and resettlement services,”, and in-person appointments with the Immigration and Refugee Review Board of Canada — which determine permanent residency claims for some refugees — have been temporarily suspended.
For now, guests at Micah House are in limbo, as many of the aspects of resettlement, like beginning school and accessing housing, remain out of reach. But, so far at least, they’ve been able to stay healthy. With more than 600 cases of COVID-19 in Hamilton, Micah House has managed to avoid any positive cases in their facility. Refugees in other centres have not been as fortunate.
[icc_block_quote quote=”I do know, at least a couple of our clients are suffering pretty greatly because of this. They already have barriers of language, barriers of culture, they don’t have access to family.” author=”Reverend Scott Jones” border_colour=”#000000″]
Willowdale Welcome Centre in Toronto had the largest COVID-19 outbreak in the city’s shelter system, which includes 72 other facilities. More than a dozen staff members and 185 clients at Willowdale tested positive for COVID-19, according to reporting from the Toronto Star. So far, no deaths related to the outbreak have been reported.
Beyond just the health effects of COVID-19, refugees in Canada also need to cope with the psychological impact of living in isolation. Being in a new country — sometimes without the ability to speak English or French — and away from their support systems, often after having lived through considerable trauma, refugees are already in a vulnerable position. Add to that lockdown measures and isolation in an unfamiliar place, and the effects can be even more severe.
“I do know, at least a couple of our clients are suffering pretty greatly because of this. They already have barriers of language, barriers of culture, they don’t have access to family,” says Jones. “There’s a level of discomfort for them that’s added on.”
Not only does Canada have a legal and, arguably, moral responsibility to assist these groups, the country also stands to benefit from doing so. Contrary to some right-wing discourse that casts refugees as an economic burden, research shows that newcomers actually have a net positive benefit economically.
One recent study tracking newcomers over 30 years across 15 countries in Western Europe found that increases in migration “significantly increase per capita GDP, reduce unemployment, and improve the balance of public finances,” and that “the additional public expenditures, which is usually referred to as the ‘refugee burden,’ is more than outweighed by the increase in tax revenues.”
Newcomers to Canada, says Jones, are more likely to be essential workers, especially during the first few years after they arrive, making them even more vulnerable to the risks surrounding COVID-19. “They’re working at slaughterhouses, they’re working in fields, they’re working in greenhouses, they’re taxi drivers, and so forth. It’s a group of people that have one more area of marginalization,” he says.
As the pandemic continues, Canada has the opportunity to provide more resources to this underserved group and uphold its international obligations. Meanwhile, the situation for refugees around the world remains uncertain: the UN has stated that it will lift resettlement travel restrictions “as soon as prudence and logistics permit.” Currently, no plans have been announced.
Canada’s health-care workforce has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, with over 3,600 health-care workers testing positive for the virus so far. Early on, the pressure that COVID-19 was expected to put on the health-care system forced policymakers to consider new measures to increase their supply of doctors. One of those measures was the introduction of a certificate that would allow internationally trained doctors without Canadian medical licenses to practise in Ontario temporarily under certain strict conditions.
The new temporary licensing policy, called the Supervised Short-Duration Certificate, dips into Ontario’s supply of international medical graduates (IMGs), many of whom are currently unable to work in their fields. (IMGs also include Canadian citizens who studied medicine abroad.) A similar measure in British Columbia also allows internationally trained doctors to practise during the pandemic.
But these new measures highlight the long-standing difficulties internationally trained doctors face when trying to gain their full medical license in Canada. In Ontario alone, there are 13,000 internationally trained doctors who are not currently working in their field according to statistics from HealthForceOntario. The new measures seek to use the untapped potential of these IMGs, but they also raise the question: Why wasn’t Canada employing this skilled workforce already?
For an IMG to become a fully licensed doctor in Ontario, they need to have graduated with a medical degree from a university recognized in the World Directory of Medical Schools, pass a series of written and practical exams, and complete a residency program. While Canadian-trained graduates have a similar licensing process, IMGs sometimes encounter more barriers along the way.
One of the main obstacles IMGs face is at the residency stage. Provinces set aside a limited number of residency spaces for IMGs — far fewer than the number who apply — creating a bottleneck of qualified applicants and making it difficult for graduates to proceed to the next step in their medical licensing qualifications.
[icc_block_quote quote=”I think at some point we need to ask the question: Shouldn’t residency seats go to the individual who is going to make the greatest contribution” author=”Deidre Lake” border_colour=”#000000″]
“I understand that, as a medical system, we invest in our Canadian medical graduates,” says Deidre Lake, executive director of the Alberta International Medical Graduates Association (AIMGA). “But we also have IMGs coming with training and experience that we haven’t paid for, and that has been really, in some sense, a cost savings, and yet we’re only letting them apply for a limited number of seats.”
“I think at some point we need to ask the question: Shouldn’t residency seats go to the individual who is going to make the greatest contribution and shouldn’t IMGs have a fair chance applying for residency seats alongside Canadian medical graduates?” she says.
Even after the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada could help address its low number of doctors by tapping into this reserve of international medical graduates waiting to practise. Canada currently ranks twenty-fifth among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries when it comes to the ratio of doctors to population, with 2.8 doctors per 1,000 inhabitants. Austria, first on the list, has nearly double that figure, with 5.2 doctors per 1,000 inhabitants.
Canada also has comparatively long wait times for specialist appointments and emergency room care compared to other industrialized countries, as well as a lack of family physicians in some provinces — which could be linked to the country’s shortage of doctors, according to a 2018 report from the Fraser Institute.
Current trends suggest we will see only “a small increase in the physician-to-population ratio” between now and 2030. And, if we factor in the current rate at which IMGs are entering health care, “the ratio will only improve from 2.74 physicians per thousand population in 2015 to 2.97 in 2030” without considerable increases, the report states.
In addition to policy issues, potential bias toward immigrant IMGs could also pose a barrier to those trying to practise in Canada. One study published in the medical journal Canadian Family Physician found that, though immigrant IMGs tended to have more years of training and clinical experience, “a relatively greater proportion of Canadian IMGs” were successful in obtaining residency positions.
Not only that, the limited number of immigrant IMGs who are eventually accepted into residency programs are more likely than their Canadian counterparts to experience discrimination on the basis of their background. A 2011 study of discriminatory behaviour experienced by family medicine residents in Alberta found that “a significantly greater proportion of [immigrant] IMGs perceived ethnicity, culture, or language” to be the basis of the discrimination they experienced, mostly in the form of “inappropriate verbal comments.”
Despite the issues IMGs face because of the country they come from or where they have studied, having a diversity of experience in health care can have many positive effects — and some IMGs have been able to put their cross-cultural and multilingual skills to use during the COVID-19 pandemic, including those who haven’t gained short-term certification. AIMGA has put together videos, written material, and digital information sessions about COVID-19 in several languages, translated by its diverse group of over 1,000 members from more than eighty countries.
AIMGA also assisted Alberta Health Services by calling 500 workers in the midst of a COVID-19 outbreak at a meatpacking plant in order to give them more information about the virus. Sixty percent of the calls were to Filipino workers, conducted with the help of four Filipino AIMGA members who were able to communicate with them in their native language about the risks and symptoms associated with COVID-19.
[icc_block_quote quote=”We have members who are working as Uber drivers, who are working as health-care aides, or at a warehouse, or in a security position, and that’s certainly not what they had in mind when they chose to immigrate to Canada” author=”Deidre Lake” border_colour=”#000000″]
The volunteers engaged in this work do so, says Deidre Lake, because being a physician is their calling, and the urge to help others — especially during a medical crisis — is hard to ignore. “It really is detrimental to the individual, to the community, and to society when you have a highly educated, highly skilled individual who is unable to utilize their skills and knowledge,” she says.
But is asking IMGs to put themselves in harm’s way during a pandemic without also allowing for more long-term licensing options fair? Seventy-six physicians in Ontario are known to have contracted COVID-19 so far, and as the health-care system continues to be affected by hundreds of new cases in Ontario each day, the strain on the province’s physicians will likely continue to grow.
Meanwhile, a significant supply of IMGs — some of whom specialize or have experience in fields relevant to COVID-19, like ventilation and infectious diseases — languish in a state of unemployment or underemployment.
“We have members who are working as Uber drivers, who are working as health-care aides, or at a warehouse, or in a security position, and that’s certainly not what they had in mind when they chose to immigrate to Canada,” says Lake. “It’s heartbreaking, really, when we as a country can’t utilize the skills and knowledge that they’re coming with.”
