Welcoming American doctors and nurses to Niagara and other regions of Ontario and Canada may be one quick way of solving our shortage of them
A Brief Commentary by Niagara At Large reporter/publisher Doug Draper
Posted July3rd, 2025 on Niagara At Large
U.S. President Donald Trump has finally fulfilled one of his long-time wishes, to gut publicly-funded medicaid or medicare (also still referred to in some circles as ‘Obama Care’) for millions of Americans – a move that potentially closes hundreds of hospitals and health clinics across the country and puts thousands of doctors and nurses out of work.
Trump’s Republican/MAGA puppets in Congress have just done that and more on the eve of the Fourth of July by passing what their dear leader calls “a big beautiful bill” that slashes a whole host of services for people who need them, from health care to food stamps, and that gifts huge tax cuts to the most rich and privileged barons and baronesses in the land.
That may be tragic for Americans, especially those at the lower end of the economic ladder, but to paraphrase an old saying; ‘behind every great problem, there is an opportunity’.
In other words, from a Canadian perspective, it could be great for us.
One of the ads from the Government of British Columbia, encouraging American doctors and nurses to move to B.C.
So here is hoping that Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford and his government, with the assistance of the Carney government in Ottawa, gets as aggressive as the Government of British Columbia is right now – with all of the ads B.C is airing and billboards it is displaying in the northwestern United States – and encourages as many American doctors and nurses as possible to move to our province to provide health care here.
Our politicians at all levels have stated over and over again that we have a chronic shortage of doctors and nurses, and as recently as a few weeks ago we have been told by Premier Ford and by Niagara Health, our region’s amalgamated system of hospital services, that one of the reasons urgent care centres in Fort Erie and Port Colborne have had their hours of operation reduced is a shortage of medical staff.
All the more reason to get going and recruit doctors and nurses from the U.S.
And we should not feel the least bit guilty about urging doctors and nurses to cross the border and practice medicine here my fellow Canadians.
Senior U.S. Senate Leader Mitch McConnell on millions of Americans losing publicly funded health care.
Let’s remember that more than 70 million Americans voted Trump back into office last November knowing, or they damn well should have known, that gutting publicly-funded health care for millions of people in their country – something he tried but failed to do during his first term in the White House – was still on the menu.
Remember too that senior Republican leader Mitch McConnell recently said of those who will lose their health care benefits; “They will get over it.” – easy words for someone who has been living off the public dole most of his adult life.
So while they are trying to get over it what a great opportunity for us and we should not waste any time encouraging as many American doctors and nurses as we can to come and work here in Niagara and other regions of our province and country.
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Doug Draper, Niagara At Large
For a media report on the Government of British Columbia’s efforts to attract medical professionals from Trump’s America and the success it is already enjoying, click on the screen immediately below –
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