Province Prioritizing Medical Residency for Ontario Students

Government prioritizing residency spots for Ontario students who attend medical school abroad

The Ontario government intends to introduce legislation that will protect Ontario’s health-care workforce by prioritizing international medical graduates (IMGs) from Ontario for postgraduate medical residency positions in the Canadian Resident Matching Service (CaRMS). This change will make it easier for Ontario students who studied medicine abroad to return home, complete their training and have a career as a doctor in Ontario.

If passed, the legislation would align Ontario with the approach taken by other jurisdictions in Canada, such as Nova Scotia, and ensure Ontario students who may otherwise do their residency elsewhere in Canada or abroad, will have a better opportunity to complete their training and begin their medical careers at home. As medical students with closer ties to the province are more likely to stay and practise in Ontario after their residency, prioritizing positions for Ontario IMGs will help thousands more doctors train, work, and remain in the province for the duration of their careers.

“Our government is protecting Ontario’s health-care system by taking bold action to strengthen Ontario’s physician workforce now, and into the future,” said Sylvia Jones, Deputy Premier and Minister of Health. “This proposed change to the matching process would make it easier for Ontarians studying medicine abroad to attend residency and have a career as a doctor back home in Ontario.”

As part of the government’s plan to increase the number of family doctors, the province will be adding more than 270 new residency seats at Ontario medical schools bringing the total to 1,739 positions across the province, a nearly 50 per cent increase since 2018. Combined with recent changes to CaRMS, these actions will ensure more doctors train, work, and remain in Ontario throughout their careers.

Currently, residency positions are filled through CaRMS, a two-round process that matches international and Canadian medical graduates to postgraduate training programs across Canada. While students who completed their studies at an Ontario institution will continue to have first-round prioritization, the new legislation will ensure a dedicated stream is reserved for Ontario IMGs who completed their medical education abroad.

The proposed regulations would prioritize Ontario IMGs and define them as someone who meets one of the following criteria:

• Attended a secondary school in Ontario full-time for two or more years
• Attended full-time and in-person at an Ontario university for two or more years
• Physically resided and lived continuously in Ontario for at least 24 weeks during a period beginning the year prior to the application (for the 2027 match, the period would begin January 1, 2025).

The government would begin working with medical schools and CaRMS to implement the proposed changes in summer 2026, ahead of the September 2026 application cycle for the 2027 CaRMS match.

Through Your Health: A Plan for Connected and Convenient Care, the Ontario government continues to take bold and decisive action to grow the province’s highly skilled health-care workforce and ensure people and their families have access to high-quality care, closer to home, for generations to come.

Quick Facts

• Changes to the legislation align Ontario with approaches already in place in other Canadian jurisdictions, including Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.
• This step would build on Ontario’s largest medical education expansion in over a decade, which is delivering two new medical schools — the Toronto Metropolitan University School of Medicine in Brampton, the York University School of Medicine in Vaughan, which will be the first medical school in Ontario’s history with a focus on training family doctors.
• Ontario has also begun expanding capacity at existing institutions, including the University of Toronto, the Northern Ontario School of Medicine University, McMaster University, and the University of Ottawa.
• Since 2018, Ontario has added 551 residency training positions, a nearly 50 per cent increase, bringing the total to 1,739 spots across the province.
• Since 2018, Ontario has added nearly 20,000 additional physicians to its health-care workforce, including an over 14 per cent increase in family doctors.
• Ontario is taking significant steps to strengthen its health-care workforce by making it easier for US-licensed nurses and board-certified physicians to move to and practise in Ontario. In 2025, over 2,300 nurses and more than 570 doctors from the US have already chosen Ontario.