US healthcare workers encouraged to consider the charms of Canada

Canada needs healthcare workers, so they've ramped up their effort to recruit medical professionals from other countries, especially the United States.

And they're seeing quite a bit of success.

Last year, the British Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons reported licensing three times the number of American physicians than they had the year before. An upcoming event on Vancouver Island is part of a grassroots effort to help ease northerly transitions.

Tod Maffin is a former CBC radio host and producer. He lives in Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. He first started encouraging Americans to visit Canada and buy Canadian products in light of President Donald Trump's tariffs. Now, Maffin has switched his focus to a new movement: Canada's Healthcare Infusions.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Kim Malcolm: Tod, you thought your country has done a great job of recruiting American healthcare professionals, but something was missing.

Tod Maffin: One piece that was missing was that community part. If you're a nurse in Tacoma in the ICU department and you have a trans daughter and you're thinking about Canada and the only thing that you need to hear is from another parent of another trans kid, you just want two minutes to ask them, “Is my daughter going to be safe?” If that's all you need to make the decision, we will set you up with 10 people in five minutes who will answer that question for you and get on the phone and do whatever you need. That kind of community connection is one of the pieces of this puzzle that I think had maybe been missing.

My wife, Jocelyn, and I don't do this for work. We have day jobs. This is all evenings and weekends, but we sort of retooled it all after a few months of it being successful here and templatized it and turned it into a national movement. There are now more than 40 of these Healthcare Infusion chapters up and running across the country in almost every province and territory doing essentially the same thing that Vancouver Island started.

Right, because all those areas need healthcare workers. You mentioned the example of the family with trans children. What other kinds of questions are Americans asking in those chatrooms and in person?

A lot of safety questions. We have a different relationship with safety here. I'm 55 years old. Other than television, I've never heard a gunshot in my life. We just have a different kind of safety. And so, we were getting a lot of questions about, “I’m Black. Will it be safe for me?” And I think a lot of people in Canada were sort of confused by the question.

Now, do we have racism here? Of course we do. Do we have jerks? Of course we do. We have a lot of jerks, but there's a difference in decency that I think most Canadians try to hold themselves to, that most communities hold themselves to.

We're not perfect. We've done great things. We've done terrible things. But we're learning. We're still a young country. I think the ethos that unites Canadians is that no matter how you voted or no matter who you believe in, from a faith point of view, or where your family is from or who you love, even on the worst of days, your neighbor will help you.

That's something that we had to deliberately communicate to a lot of Americans who had very real concerns about very survival-level questions. Is it safe? Can I make enough money? Those sorts of things.

Tod, for people who are curious about the event happening this weekend and want to check it out, are there going to be people available to answer questions, maybe more specific questions about life in Nanaimo and the healthcare system?

Yes, there will be. There'll be a couple of community tables there. We'll have a couple of realtors if you have questions about housing. We'll have a couple of registered Canadian immigration consultants if you have questions about immigration. We’ll have people from the school district if you're a parent and want to ask questions about how schools work.

It's not a trade show. It's not a recruitment fair or anything like that. It's literally just going to be some tables without even any real signs, just with people from the community there. If you're considering Canada, if you're considering [British Columbia], it's like an audition. Check us out, kick the tires, see if you like it.

People come, and they don't go back. There are a few dozen healthcare workers who came up last year who have moved their family here and are working in our hospitals and in our public healthcare system. And a year ago today, they were just living and working in the U.S., then they came here and saw what Vancouver Island and British Columbia was like. I can't speak for them, but I don't think they're going back.

Listen to the interview by clicking the play button above.