This Toronto doctor has over 2,000 patients, but still no permanent residency
CBC
Dr. Michael Antil moved from North Carolina to Toronto in July 2023, seeking a more diverse and broad-minded environment for his family and a universal health-care system in which to practice. But three years later, despite Canada's well-documented doctor shortage and so many theoretical routes to citizenship for skilled workers like himself, he still doesn't have permanent residency.
Antil came to Canada with over two decades' experience in the States — and he is now adeptly managing an above-average load of over 2,000 patients at a Toronto clinic. Yet he and his wife (an ESL teacher) are still living by dint of temporary work permits, their children are facing international student fees for post-secondary education, and he had to cough up an additional 25 per cent foreign buyers' tax on his house.
Rifling through an inches-tall stack of paperwork, the 50-year-old told White Coat, Black Art host Dr. Brian Goldman about all the hoops, hurdles and red tape he’s come up against since first applying for permanent residency in 2023.
He has been rejected three times on various technicalities even though, he says with a rueful laugh, "Ontario needs doctors.”
Over 2.5 million Ontarians are without a family doctor, according to the Ontario Medical Association. Across Canada that number sits at around 5.9 million.
“There's this identified need but we don't have infrastructure in place to actually make this happen,” said Wanda Morvay, who hired Antil at Toronto's Albany Medical Clinic back in 2023. Despite millions of Canadians going without access to primary care, this years-long problem remains unsolved by both the federal and provincial governments.
“It's staggering to me that Mike has still not got his permanent residency yet after trying three times, and there are 2,000 families who depend on his medical services,” Morvay said.
"He's a wonderful doctor. And I think he's exactly the kind of physician we want to have in Canada.”
Antil’s immigration journey began in 2023, when, with a five-year contract at the Albany clinic in hand, he settled in Toronto with a licence from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) and an Ontario work permit.
Getting the former was a four-month back-and-forth process that Antil meticulously completed step by step, which he likens to building an intricate Lego set.
Getting the latter meant making a 13-hour drive from North Carolina to Buffalo, N.Y. — on the advice of an immigration lawyer after his application, filed that February, had still not been answered by June.
Things got harder after that. Antil also applied to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s (IRCC) express entry under the Federal Skilled Worker program — a competitive permanent residency stream that assigns applicants a points-based score, and then invites those with a high enough score to apply for the accelerated process; shorter than the usual six months.
But upon arriving, Antil didn’t meet that points threshold — though fluent in Spanish, he didn’t speak French, and his age (then 47) was considered high.
So he applied through the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program (OINP), which awards bonus IRCC points to people with valuable skills. But it also required more forms, including additional certification of his U.S. medical school diploma — odd, he says, since he already has a medical licence in Ontario.
