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.
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.
For many immigrant nurses, the path to licensing is long and costly.
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’s breadwinner, she had to focus on working and sending money home.
“I used to hear it’s not that easy, you need to go back to school, you need to study again,” she says. “So in my mind, I’ll just work because if I stop, I won’t be able to provide for my parents.”
Aguilar’s experience reflects what nursing leaders say is a persistent problem. Doris Grinspun, CEO of the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario (RNAO), says the report highlights long-standing barriers for internationally educated nurses (IEN).
“The reality is that these are very, very qualified people, and that we have shortages of nurses,” she says. “So many things have happened that make it better, yet still you see more IENs looking to work outside of Ontario and outside of Canada.”
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.
“We ask employers to look at the mirror,” she says. “What is stopping them from integrating IENs faster and better so they stay here and work with our patients? Because patients come from everywhere, and we need nurses from everywhere.”
Edward Cruz, associate professor at the University of Windsor’s 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.
“There’s still a lot of work to be done to help IENs better integrate into and transition to our workforce,” he says. “We shouldn’t 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.”
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.
For Mark Vincent Ong, who is also from the Philippines and works in patient transport, the licensing process still feels out of reach.
“I’m still in the process of thinking, I haven’t started because it’s really hard to juggle time to process my credentials and everything,” he says. “I have to consider the financial capacity of myself right now, because life here right now is so different, we know that everything is rising.”
Ong says governments could do more by recognizing international education standards.
“Hopefully that’s something that can be fixed so that those who move or migrate, or land here as an immigrant, don’t struggle to apply or process their profession here.”
With files from Theresa Redula and Keisha Balatbat, OMNI News
