Canadian-born family doctor struggles to come home through a wall of red tape

Canada is grappling with a severe shortage of family doctors — but Canadian-born family physicians working abroad are fighting to obtain the paperwork they need to practise here.

Dr. Stephanie DeMarchi, a general practitioner born in Hamilton, Ont. who has worked in Australia for the past ten years, is one of those doctors.

She trained at the University of Queensland and spent her residency and years as a GP working in rural Australia. She now wants to come home to Canada to take over from her mother, a family doctor in Hamilton who is retiring soon.

But a tangle of red tape has made the process an arduous one. She's been in a battle with Canada's health-care bureaucracy for nearly 16 months to get the licence she needs to practise.

In April 2022, DeMarchi first opened a Physicians Apply account under a program run by the Medical Council of Canada (MCC), the body that evaluates medical graduates and physicians.

In October, she sat for an eight-hour MCC exam testing medical knowledge. She said the test set her back a few thousand dollars.

Then she moved with her Australian husband and two young children to Canada. She said she assumed the process would be complete in the near term, since she's already a practising doctor.

That didn't happen — she still doesn't have what she needs to work in Canada.

DeMarchi said she had to move back to Australia by herself to keep her Australian licence current while the MCC works to verify documents like her medical degree, post-graduate certificate, resume and police background check.

Those documents must be approved by the MCC before it can issue a "licentiate," something anyone looking to practise medicine in Canada must have in order to apply for a licence.

She said she's been holed up in Gundagai, a small town in rural New South Wales about 390 kilometres from Sydney, living in a caravan park and working at a local practice while her family is far away in southern Ontario.

"It all feels so intentional, like they just don't want me," DeMarchi told CBC News.

"The process just has to change. It's not only affecting lives but it has the real potential to destroy lives as well.

"I don't know why Canada wouldn't want to have these skilled workers in a time of crisis. I don't know why they haven't created a much more polished, efficient system."