A new Statistics Canada report says only 63 per cent of immigrants who came to Canada intending to work as nurses were employed in the field by 2021.<\/p>\n
The study looked at immigrants admitted between 2010 and 2020 who identified nursing as their intended occupation. About one in four ended up in lower-skilled jobs or unemployed, even as hospitals face critical staffing shortages.<\/p>\n
For many immigrant nurses, the path to licensing is long and costly.<\/p>\n
Joanne Aguilar, an internationally educated nurse from the Philippines now working as a personal support worker in Toronto, has been trying to obtain her nursing licence in Canada for about a year. She says she delayed starting the process because, as her family\u2019s breadwinner, she had to focus on working and sending money home.<\/p>\n
\u201cI used to hear it\u2019s not that easy, you need to go back to school, you need to study again,\u201d she says. \u201cSo in my mind, I\u2019ll just work because if I stop, I won\u2019t be able to provide for my parents.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aguilar\u2019s experience reflects what nursing leaders say is a persistent problem. Doris Grinspun, CEO of the Registered Nurses\u2019 Association of Ontario (RNAO), says the report highlights long-standing barriers for internationally educated nurses (IEN).<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reality is that these are very, very qualified people, and that we have shortages of nurses,\u201d she says. \u201cSo many things have happened that make it better, yet still you see more IENs looking to work outside of Ontario and outside of Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n
Grinspun says licensing and exam requirements remain hurdles, even after the introduction of fast-track licensing during the pandemic. She says IENs must be treated the same as Canadian graduates if the country wants to fill critical staffing gaps in care.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe ask employers to look at the mirror,\u201d she says. \u201cWhat is stopping them from integrating IENs\u00a0faster and better so they stay here and work with our patients? Because patients come from everywhere, and we need nurses from everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
Edward Cruz, associate professor at the University of Windsor\u2019s Faculty of Nursing, says recent regulatory changes have made it easier for IENs to obtain a licence more quickly, but broader retention strategies are still needed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s still a lot of work to be done to help IENs better integrate into and transition to our workforce,\u201d he says. \u201cWe shouldn\u2019t be treating IENs as just warm bodies to fill in vacant spots when we need them and then discard them once the need is no longer there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hospitals across the country continue to report widespread staffing pressures. In the first half of 2025, Statistics Canada reported nearly 69,000 health-care job vacancies, among the highest of any sector despite recent declines.<\/p>\n
For Mark Vincent Ong, who is also from the Philippines and works in patient transport, the licensing process still feels out of reach.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m still in the process of thinking, I haven\u2019t started because it\u2019s really hard to juggle time to process my credentials and everything,\u201d he says. \u201cI have to consider the financial capacity of myself right now, because life here right now is so different, we know that everything is rising.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ong says governments could do more by recognizing international education standards.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully that\u2019s something that can be fixed so that those who move or migrate, or land here as an immigrant, don\u2019t struggle to apply or process their profession here.\u201d<\/p>\n
With files from Theresa Redula and Keisha Balatbat, OMNI News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new Statistics Canada report says only 63 per cent of immigrants who came to Canada intending to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":{"0":"post-172593","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-healthcare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}