Dr. Sophia Halassy could not be happier. The 32-year previous bilingual obstetrician-gynecologist is settling into a brand new job on the Dr. Georges-L.-Dumont College Hospital Centre in Moncton, serving to to sort out a years-long ready listing of sufferers.
It is a homecoming for Halassy, her husband and their two younger daughters. After greater than a decade of medical college, residency and employment in the USA, she was desirous to get her household again on Canadian soil.
Whereas Halassy had lengthy harboured hopes of returning to her native New Brunswick, it was the swing to the political proper within the U.S. that offered the ultimate push, she mentioned. The reversal of the landmark 1973 case Roe v. Wade, which established a constitutional proper to abortion within the U.S., was a turning level for her.
“That was in 2022, and I do know the time precisely as a result of I simply had my daughter. And I believe at that time it was very scary,” she mentioned, referring to the way forward for ladies’s reproductive rights in the USA.

These fears continued to develop with the Trump administration’s drive to root out what it perceives to be liberal bias in medical analysis, which has led to the firing of educated health-care staff, medical technicians and researchers.
Many others are leaving in frustration due to what they contemplate to be an anti-science agenda championed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of well being and human companies.
Cuts to funding for Medicaid, the Facilities for Illness Management and the Nationwide Institutes of Well being are pushing extra physicians like Halassy again throughout the border.
“I felt secure the place we had been [in New York], however I do not assume that may stand for different elements of the nation sadly,” she mentioned.
“We’re very humbled to be again in a spot that feels a bit extra secure in that division.”
Extra positions wanted
Amid a flurry of medical migration from the U.S., physician-poor provinces equivalent to New Brunswick are scrambling to welcome medical doctors from south of the border.
Sean Hatchard, spokesperson for the Division of Well being, mentioned in a press release that the province has been “actively recruiting in the USA, particularly for hard-to-fill doctor specialist positions.”
As of March 1, 2025, there have been 389 full-time equal doctor positions vacant in New Brunswick — 192 in household drugs and one other 197 for different specialties.
In obstetrics and gynecology, simply two vacant positions are listed on the federal government web site, one in Bathurst and one other in Moncton, and Halasssy mentioned that is not sufficient.

Even for an skilled obstetrician-gynecologist like Halassy, it took years to discover a place in New Brunswick. And when her present job did come up, there have been no ensures.
“I actually needed to promote myself, like a billboard of what I can present,” she mentioned. “It’s totally completely different versus someplace like in America, the place you are interviewing them, they don’t seem to be interviewing you.”
She mentioned given the turmoil within the U.S., the province would profit from lowering pink tape and making extra positions obtainable.
There are a number of different specialties with a single New Brunswick emptiness, together with dermatology, inner drugs, urology, orthopedic surgical procedure, vascular surgical procedure and bodily rehabilitation.
Dr. Stan Kutcher, professor emeritus with the college of drugs at Dalhousie College and a Nova Scotia senator, mentioned Canada has a manner of “making issues as sophisticated as we will” for no purpose.”
“If Canada needs to draw — and I argue that we should appeal to — individuals who worth what Canadians worth, who wish to reside in a rustic that has a strong democratic system, who wish to reside in a rustic wherein we respect and help information, we respect and help science, we’ve got to interrupt down the boundaries which might be stopping them from coming.”
Dr. Stan Kutcher, professor emeritus with the college of drugs at Dalhousie College, says Canada should appeal to medical doctors within the U.S. and scale back the pink tape that stops them from coming.
Kutcher mentioned roadblocks in medical licensure and immigration are the most important boundaries he sees.
“Frankly, I do not assume that we should always wait till somebody goes by means of their traditional immigration processes as a result of we’ve got a disaster presently. Certainly to goodness we’d be capable to make particular pathways for individuals who we want right here, individuals who have this unbelievable type of experience that may profit Canada.”
‘All people will get the care that they want’
For her half, Halassy has no regrets about returning to New Brunswick. “There is not any higher place than Canada” to observe drugs, she mentioned, and it comes with out a few of the ethical dilemmas she confronted in the USA.
“How do you refuse a affected person entry to care if they do not have insurance coverage? How do you say No to someone who could be dying from most cancers?”
“That ought to by no means be a selection for any affected person … and for me that was the massive promoting characteristic to Canada,” she mentioned. “All people will get the care that they want.”
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