Jon Liedtke
December 1, 2025

Imagine you’re in the middle of a brutal winter, shivering in an emergency room, hours behind schedule because there aren’t enough doctors. A physician shortage crisis has been declared, rural hospitals continue to close their doors, and wait times are stretching into Kafkaesque absurdity. But across town, medical schools are churning out over 1,000 highly trained specialists each year – for Saudi Arabia.

Not for you. Not for the single mom in Thunder Bay or the retiree in Halifax. For Riyadh. This isn’t hyperbole; it’s government policy.

Canadian medical institutions, starved for cash and addicted to foreign revenue, are treating our public health system like a luxury export good. They’re training Saudi-funded doctors at $100,000 a head – raking in $100 million annually – all while thousands of Canadians who’ve already paid for their medical degrees abroad (the so-called CSAs, or Canadians Studying Abroad) are locked out of domestic residency spots. “No capacity” they’re told… But it’s funny how that capacity materializes once the currency is converted and the cheque clears.

We’re not just short on doctors here in Canada; egregiously, we’re exporting them. As the federal government’s cap on international students is in effect, educational institutions are crying fowl about “revenue losses” and are admitting that without foreign tuition – often four times what Canadians pay – they can’t sustain domestic programs. It’s the same addiction, different delivery: Saudi cash for medical schools, foreign student fees for the rest. The result? A two-tier system where citizenship is a discount ticket, yes, but the highest bidder gets into First Class.

This is the Great Canadian Sell-Out: some of our public institutions – built by taxpayers and for taxpayers – have surreptitiously created a two-tiered system, prioritizing balance sheets over bedside care or educational opportunities. Let’s unpack the scandal, the stats, and the sovereignty trap it’s creating, because if we don’t, we’ll wake up to a healthcare system that’s as Canadian as a Riyadh skyline.

Training Elites for Export

It starts with the numbers, cold and damning. According to the Canadian Post-M.D. Education Registry (CAPER) and the National IMG Database (International Medical Graduates), Saudi Arabia has been the largest source of “visa trainees” in Canada for years – that’s fully funded residents and fellows who don’t compete with domestic spots, but occupy limited hospital time and resources. These aren’t cheap tourists though; they’re elite prospects in fields like cardiac surgery, neurology, and anesthesia, paying top dollar through the Saudi Arabian Cultural Bureau (SACB).

From 2016 to 2024 (and it’s looking like this year too), on average, according to official figures, roughly 1,000 Saudi-funded doctors receive training in Canada annually. Peak years saw more than 1,000 trainees in programs at the University of Toronto, McGill, and UBC for example. That’s $100,000 per trainee annually in fees – straight revenue for cash-strapped schools. Multiply it out and it’s $100-million a year. For context, that’s enough to fully fund 1,000 residency spots for Canadians, plugging the exact gap that’s leaving ERs understaffed and CSAs in limbo.

Conservative MP Dan Mazier nailed it recently on Twitter: “We are training Saudi Arabia’s doctors in Canadian hospitals (over 1,100), while thousands of Canadians who study medicine abroad are told there is no training capacity for them at home. …and our universities are making MILLIONS…”

He’s right. These aren’t spots in a vacuum – they’re finite resources. A surgeon supervising a Saudi trainee isn’t mentoring a Canadian. Our governments have decided to allow the renting out of our hospital bed and hospital hours AND teaching talent, all while our public institutions claim poverty.

And the human rights angle? The leaders of our public education and healthcare institutions rarely, if ever, discuss Saudi human rights abuses – women’s rights crackdowns, journalist detentions and murders, etc. – while pocketing their cash. It’s not coincidence; it’s conditionality.

Flashback to 2018 when a Global Affairs Canada tweet about Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder triggered Saudi recall orders. U of T and McGill freaked out at the prospect of losing the Saudi foreign funding stream and hospitals panicked at the prospect of immediately losing those necessary residents. Extensions saved the day at the time, but the vulnerability was exposed. Why tether our training infrastructure to a foreign regime’s whims? It buys silence on human rights, muzzles criticism, and turns public institutions into diplomatic pawns.

Foreign Funds Come Home to Roost

Flip the script to undergraduate programs, and the addiction looks eerily similar. The federal cap on international students – aimed at easing housing pressures and exploitation – has colleges and universities in full meltdowns, staring down massive revenue shortfalls with foreign tuition slashed dramatically. Institutions that ballooned on billions from visa students – paying $40,000+ a year versus $7,000 for domestics – are now threatening cuts to Canadian programs. “We can’t afford to teach our own kids,” the subtext screams.

This isn’t new. For years, colleges treated international recruitment like a Ponzi scheme: Enroll en masse, pocket the premiums, build nothing meaningful in return – no housing, no support services, but often big fancy legacy projects… The profits privatized; the crises (skyrocketing rents, overburdened ERs) socialized into our communities. Now, with the gap tightening, the withdrawal is ugly. Schools are holding domestic education hostage: “Fund our foreign streams, or watch Canadian spots vanish.”

The Capacity Lie and Building the Away Team

For years, we’ve swallowed the line (or the lie): “No residency spots left – blame limited resources.” But 1,000 residency spots can materialize each year for Saudis. It’s the airline overbooking scam: “Sorry, sir, the flight is full,” while the high-roller slips in via first-class. If we can train 1,000 doctors for Riyadh, we can train them for Canada. We just choose not to pay for it.

Worse, we’re building up the Away Team, or Saudi Arabia. These trainees return home as polished specialists, bolstering a regime we wouldn’t trust with our foreign policy, let alone our healthcare. Meanwhile, thousands of CSAs – bright Canadians who fled abroad because residency spots were “full” here – are begging to come home. They speak our languages, know our winters, and most importantly, want to work at home. But no: The door’s been bolted from the inside keeping them out, while the mail-slot is unlocked for the cheque to arrive (and don’t worry about a Canada Post strike, they’ll send the money privately).

It’s reverse brain drain on steroids. We’re a starving man hawking his last bit of food for pennies – importing foreign doctors to “fix” the shortages that we’ve manufactured ourselves by exporting our talent that wants to stay at home.

Chump Change and Strategic Suicide

Now the $100 million a year that Saudi pays may sound like a windfall, and yes, to you dear reader or to me, it’s life-changing. But to the federal or provincial budgets? A rounding error!

We’re talking peanuts compared to the myriad of fiascos or endless consultant contracts our governments can either cook up or rely upon. For that pittance, we’re mortgaging our medical sovereignty.

A Call to Reclaim What’s Ours

This isn’t underfunding; it’s deliberate outsourcing. The Saudi pipeline and student cap crisis weld into one indictment: We’ve commercialized citizenship. Public colleges and universities act like export corporations – prioritizing premium payers, but treating Canadians as legacy users in our own house. First Class is open for foreigner cash; but Canadians are, in many cases, literally left in the lobby, or worse, waiting room.

It’s revenue addiction at its core. Bloated administrations, vanity projects, all propped on foreign fees instead of demanding real government investment. Now, as geopolitics shifts, the Ponzi Scheme is unraveling. The blackmail is blatant and clear: “Cut our foreign funding and we’ll cut domestic programs.”

But here’s the opportunity and policy pivot: Let’s invest that $100-million annually ourselves and staff hospitals with homegrown talent by bringing home our Canadian Students Abroad and let’s diversify our revenue so no single stream – whether from Riyadh or Beijing – can hold its hand on the plug to our life support again. Let’s eliminate the gaping and visible national security gap and assert our national, educational, and healthcare sovereignty.

Public institutions, it’s time to remember your mandates: Serve Canadians first. Governments, stop selling us out. The nation, and its taxpayers, are not an ATM; we’re Canadians, and we’re citizens. It’s time to rope off first class and fill the plane with Canadians who bought their tickets first.

If this resonates, share it. Tag your MP. Demand better. In the end, our public institutions were built for Canadians first.

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