Quebec medical schools are systematically discriminating against foreign-trained doctors, and trail other Canadian provinces by excluding more applicants to residency than anywhere else, according to a scathing Human Rights Commission report released Tuesday.

Comlan Amouzou, a foreign-trained doctor, said he was repeatedly refused residencies in Quebec. (Facebook)The provincial commission released results of its extensive investigation into discriminatory practices faced by international medical graduates, and concluded that they come up against a series of obstacles that "disproportionately disadvantage and excludes them from faculties of medicine" at Quebec teaching hospitals where doctors take their residency to complete training.

Medical schools regularly refuse to accept foreign-trained doctors whose skills and diplomas are approved by Quebec's College of Physicians, despite the fact that 255 resident positions have not been filled in the last five years.

The stakes are high for Quebecers, said the commission, because more than two million residents of the province don't have access to a family doctor.

"In the Province of Quebec, we have only seven per cent of doctors trained elsewhere that are practising," said Gaétan Cousineau, president of Quebec's Human Rights Commission.

"In Ontario, they got 20 per cent. If you go to Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland, you find 40 per cent [of foreign-trained doctors working]. So what are we doing that is creating these obstacles that are not permitting these doctors to practise medicine here in Quebec?" he asked.

The study looked at medical students' applications for residency in 2007. While all Quebec medical students found positions, schools rejected 174 international graduates, even though they passed their equivalency exams, approved by the College of Physicians.

The commission believes the discrepancy in acceptance rates is due to selection criteria that is not objective, Cousineau said.

"I think you get to apprehensions or [reservations], that you think [foreign doctors] won't have capacity to succeed, and that's built on stereotypes," he said.

The unprecedented report makes 11 recommendations to improve the situation, including the use of objective admission criteria — but its findings are not binding.

Report confirms MD's experience

The findings come as no surprise to Comlan Amouzou, a physician originally from Togo who worked for eight years in a hospital emergency room in France, before taking his chances in Canada. He tried for years, in vain, to secure a residency in Quebec. Now he represents the Coalition of Association of Foreign Trained Doctors, an advocacy group based in Montreal.

Medicine is a domain where doctors are well paid. And they don't want foreign graduates to ... get paid like them!" Amouzou suggests. "So they try to find false reasons to say that foreign doctors are incompetent. And this has been going on for years."

The report vindicates countless numbers of doctors who have immigrated to Canada and chosen Quebec, he said.

The findings also bolster any legal case involving a physician refused residency, said Quebec's Centre for Research Action on Race Relations.

"We are recommending that anyone who has been discriminated against in the last two years come forward and sue the government," said CRARR executive director Fo Niemi.

The Quebec government has promised to spend $2.5 million this year to make sure 65 residency spaces are reserved for foreign-trained doctors, the health ministry said.