‘We literally have the word British in our name’: U.K. doctors welcome in B.C., premier says

B.C. Premier David Eby is rolling out the welcome mat for any doctors in the United Kingdom who are unhappy with their current situation and want to relocate to his province.

Speaking at an unrelated news conference Monday, Eby was asked about B.C.’s advertisements in the U.K. to get doctors to come here. In his response, the premier highlighted the challenges Canadian jurisdictions are facing in the health-care system, mainly around the “critical shortage” of health professionals.

“The people to deliver the care is where we’re short, and one of the challenges we’ve had nationally is provinces competing with each other for these professionals, driving up salaries in a fixed pool of specialists to deliver this care, and that’s not sustainable,” Eby said.

“An agreement that we reached with the other premiers, that we’re all doing our best to honour, is that we’re not going to try to poach people from other provinces across Canada. We’re going to try to support each other with training and better coordination.”

However, Eby notes the province hasn’t made that commitment to the U.K. government.

“And if the government of the U.K. is not recognizing what they have in terms of the amazing skilled professionals that are there, they’re not compensating them properly, they’re not treating them with respect, then they should come to British Columbia,” Eby said.

“We literally have the word British in our name, and they’ll feel very at home here — we’ve got double-decker buses in Victoria, there’s so many wonderful opportunities for British doctors to come here and enjoy everything that our province has to offer,” the premier quipped.

Eby says he’d go to the airport himself to greet any U.K. doctors willing to relocate.

Last October, the B.C. government introduced new legislation aimed at helping more internationally trained professionals enter the province’s workforce. A year prior, in 2022, the province moved to speed up the process to allow internationally trained doctors and nurses to begin practicing in B.C.

For individuals who’ve done international medical training and are looking for residency placement, Eby says B.C. has expanded the number of spaces, with “more and more internationally trained” doctors taking part.

However, he notes the goal is to “bring in doctors who are ready to hit the ground running.”

International recruitment focusing on U.K., Ireland: province

The province tells CityNews it’s taking steps to address shortages in B.C., with international recruitment being one of those steps.

It notes international recruitment is done in collaboration with respective colleges and the Health Employers Association of BC. The province adds it has improved its online recruitment portal, with ads on social media directing interested applicants to BCHealthCareers.ca.

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According to the government, it is specifically targeting the U.K. and Ireland as those jurisdictions have training standards that resemble those in B.C. and Canada. It adds transferring credentials and the process for foreign credential recognition from these countries to those locally are simpler as a result of this.

Jobs are also promoted in other countries through the portal, the province adds.

Earlier this month, Health Minister Adrian Dix said the province had overall increased its number of family doctors, noting B.C. now has the highest number of family physicians per capita in Canada.

Dix said on Feb. 9 that more than 4,000 physicians had signed up since the province’s new family doctor payment model was launched a year ago. As of December 2023, there were about 5,000 doctors “working in longitudinal primary care,” he added.

The province says, between Jan. 1, 2023, and Feb. 1, 2024, 768 international medical graduates were newly registered to practice in B.C.

In roughly that same time period, more than 800 internationally educated nurses had been newly registered in B.C.