“[…] “Hiring More Health Care Workers,” will work to expand the province’s workforce through hiring, training and education initiatives. Over the next five years, the province said it will expand its education program by adding 10 undergraduate seats and 295 postgraduate positions at medical schools. At the moment, nearly 1.8 million Ontarians don’t have a regular family physician, according to a recent research study. In just the first six months of the pandemic, more than 170,000 patients in Ontario lost their family doctors. […] The government reiterated their new “As of Right” rules, which eliminated the registration requirement for out-of-province health-care workers in an effort to lower the barrier of entry for practicing in Ontario.”

“[C]hanges proposed by the Ontario Ministry of Health, the College of Nurses of Ontario and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, will support recruitment efforts and make it faster and easier for health care professionals trained in Ontario, other provinces and internationally to register and practice in Ontario. Changes that will come into effect immediately, include: Allowing internationally educated nurses to register in a temporary class and begin working sooner while they work towards full registration; Making it easier for non-practicing or retired nurses to return to the field by introducing flexibility to the requirement that they need to have practiced nursing within a certain period of time before applying for reinstatement; and Creating a new temporary independent practice registration class for physicians from other provinces and territories, making it easier for them to work for up to 90 days in Ontario.”