Cutting Off Our Nose To Spite Their Face

"The implications on both sides are staggering. Even if there is no amicable solution to the issue, it is not possible to mobilize all the Saudi trainees elsewhere in such a short period of time."
"These lessons are hard, or impossible, to replace as all research programs are different."
"From the Canadian hospital side, finding the proper human resources to manage the void created by the departure of our Saudi trainees will take herculean efforts. Having a few months of grace will help hospitals manage and cope."
Dr. Frank Rybicki, chairman, department of radiology, The Ottawa Hospital 

Sixty-seven Saudi medical residents and fellows study at the University of Ottawa and work in Ottawa area hospitals. Tony Caldwell / OTTwp

"The effect of training Saudi Arabian doctors on both the training of Canadian doctors and on our medical manpower needs are vital issues. Canada is short of many doctors, notably family physicians, and particularly in rural areas. In spite of this, it is an alarming fact that this year 115 new graduates from Canadian medical schools did not match to a Canadian residency program, and so have been unable to train and practise here. Even if this unfortunate group were granted training positions, it would have made little dent in our doctor shortages."
"Meanwhile, there is a treasure trove of other well-qualified doctors available for residency training in Canada: Canadian International Medical Graduates. These are mainly students who satisfied the requirements to get into the limited number of Canadian medical school posts, but didn't make the cut, and so to pursue their career goals have gone to overseas medical schools. In 2010, it was estimated that there were no fewer than 3,570 Canadian citizens studying medicine abroad."
"Just imagine the far-reaching benefits to our medical manpower shortages if more of these "eager beavers" [90% want to return to Canada for further training and to work here, but only a few are accepted] were allowed into those 740 to 1,000 training positions currently held by certain other international medical graduates."
Dr. John Stewart, emeritus professor, McGill University professor, departments of medicine and neurology and neurosurgery

In total, there are 59 Dalhousie medical school residents from Saudi Arabia. (Shutterstock/funnyangel)

Saudi Arabia, in a fury over a tweet issued by Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland, that two female Saudi social activists who were arrested by Saudi authorities be "immediately released", responded by withdrawing their ambassador to Canada and expelling the Canadian ambassador to Saudi Arabia, by ordering that all investment by Saudi Arabia in Canada be sold, that the Saudi airline stop direct flights to Toronto, that all Saudi scholarship funded university students return immediately to Saudi Arabia, but that oil deliveries to Canada will be unaffected.

All new trade between the two countries has come to a halt, ordered by Saudi Arabia. No word from either Canada or Saudi Arabia whether the controversial $15-billion deal to sell Canadian military armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia at war in Yemen will proceed, however. The dim-witted impulse by Chrystia Freeland to bypass normal diplomatic channels in conveying her opinion to her Saudi counterpart by issuing a casual but damning tweet in English, French and Arabic has brought the government of Canada to the position of defending itself by insisting it will always 'defend women's rights' as human rights.

The Saudis and their allies fulminate that this is grossly inappropriate interference by one country into the sovereign affairs of another and as such is intolerable. Nothing but a grovelling apology will suffice to damp down the outraged apoplexy and its accompanying penalties heaped on Canada by a Crown Prince whose authority appears absolute and who will not tolerate so much as a hint of criticism of his imperious decision-making, extended on this occasion as a warning shot against the bow of any other ship of state that might consider similar awkward condemnation of his choices.

Other Western democratic nations which generally share Canadian values without sharing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's heightened, hysterical propping up of entitlements in minority issues have chosen to sit back and watch the fireworks, remaining themselves happily uninvolved and unsupportive of the rash and all-too-often absurdly inappropriate approaches taken by Trudeau and his Cabinet linking such issues as LGBTQ-2 "rights" with international free trade agreements. This is a hole that Canada has dug for itself with its Liberal government's focus and virtue-signalling.

A country that has convinced itself that it is capable of "punching above its weight" in world affairs has neglected the weight and well-being of its own affairs. With some of the world's greatest petroleum deposits in natural gas and crude oil, failing, like such dominating world powers as Venezuela and Nigeria and Iran, to take the required steps to make itself independent in energy by building its own crude oil refineries and pipelines to send the finished product from west to east, and to tidewater for shipping abroad where Europe and China would eagerly take up the slack, and Canada would no longer be dependent on the whims of the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.

Even more seriously puzzling, that Canadian governments while extolling their initiative and brilliance in building a universal health care system for the nation, has failed to appropriately finance it so that shortages in operating rooms, medical practitioners including specialists, technicians and nurses would not continue to plague the delivery of health care when and as needed for optimum service to Canadians. So that a situation where hospitals and universities, short of operating funds become dependent on foreign students paying outsize fees to overcompensate for Canada's lack of foresight.

Canadian medical graduates living in an affluent country in dire need of more physicians, nurses and medical technicians find themselves unable to secure residency training, finding themselves unemployed in a nation that badly needs their active employment in a steadily growing population whose elder quotient is also growing, represents a formula for failure. The Saudi trainees, funded generously by their governments and hospitals to further their own country's interests provide Canadian institutions with badly needed operating funds, while depriving Canadian doctors of training opportunities.

This does not compute.

Canada may be taking the easy way out of doctor shortages as long as the Saudis are supplying so many trainees and paying for them to be here. Wayne Cuddington / Ottawa Citizen