Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew in Saskatoon in June, 2025.Liam Richards/The Canadian Press
Manitoba has hired 13 U.S.-trained physicians to practise in the province, Premier Wab Kinew announced Friday, attributing the moves to values that differentiate Canada from the United States.
Flanked by provincial officials and one of the newly employed doctors at the Manitoba legislature, Mr. Kinew said President Donald Trump’s broad-scale restructuring of U.S. health and science agencies has provided an opportunity for Canada to attract workers who no longer feel valued or safe south of the border.
Mr. Kinew paraphrased a famous poem inscribed on a plaque at the Statue of Liberty, The New Colossus, to mark what he called a historic moment: “Give us your poor, give us your weary, give us your Americans yearning to be free.”
The new doctors will practise in a variety of specialties, including emergency medicine, psychiatry, pathology and pediatric care. Eleven of them are at facilities in Winnipeg; one is in the Brandon area; and another serves the smaller Manitoba cities that are part of the Southern Health-Santé Sud regional health authority, the province said.
Their moves were facilitated by Manitoba’s health care retention and recruitment office, which opened in the summer of 2024 and has since last year provided fast-track support for immigration and medical licensing.
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“Everyone sees what’s happening in the United States,” Mr. Kinew said.
“We’re very proud here in Manitoba to accept people as they are, to celebrate inclusion and diversity, and to keep our doors open to the world. We’re also very proud, as Canadians, to have a free, universal, public health care system.”
Amid increasing political turbulence in the U.S., provinces across Canada have ramped up their recruitment efforts in recent months. But while Ontario and British Columbia have been able to hire American nurses and doctors, many provinces – such as Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and Saskatchewan – have struggled with these initiatives.
In Manitoba, since his election in late 2023, Mr. Kinew has promised to reform the province’s health system. Critics, however, have panned his government’s lack of progress toward reducing hospital wait times and increasing access for primary care.
On Friday, the Premier touted a net gain of 285 doctors hired since he came into office as part of Manitoba’s advancements on those goals. The 13 U.S. physicians will add to that, and Manitoba is in discussions to hire dozens more doctors from the U.S. and Britain, he said.
At the announcement, Jesse Krikorian, a physician who moved from Michigan to practise at a medical clinic in central Winnipeg, told reporters he wanted to focus on underserved populations, such as LGBTQ patients. But he felt “morally challenged” with the profit-oriented system in the U.S., where he also continuously worried about government interference, he said.
“I’m not spending my lunch hour on the phone with insurance companies any more and I can actually use that time to care for people,” Dr. Krikorian said.