Canada recruits internationally educated health professionals. Credential recognition is only part of the challenge

Canada is recruiting internationally educated health professionals to help address health-care workforce shortages , while governments are also trying to make it faster and easier for newcomers to have their qualifications recognized.

The 2025 federal budget proposed $97 million over five years, beginning in 2026–27, for the Foreign Credential Recognition Action Fund focused on improving recognition in health and construction.

However, recognizing qualifications is only one stage.

Another important measure of success is professional integration: whether internationally educated professionals enter appropriate employment, use their previous skills and experience, progress professionally and remain in Canada’s health workforce.

As a migration and labour-market researcher, I have studied the experiences of Nigerian-trained health professionals in Canada and Nigeria.

My research suggests the distance between credential recognition and professional integration can be considerable.

Integration is a trajectory Credential recognition answers a specific question: Does this person’s training meet the standards required to register here? It’s a necessary gate-keeping function, and regulators are right to apply it.

Integration asks something harder: What happens to the career afterward? National data illustrate the difference.

In 2021, only 57.7 per cent of employed, internationally educated health professionals were working in health occupations.

Recent reforms show that governments are trying to address these barriers.

Some programs now go beyond credential assessment to support supervised practice, work placements, mentoring and other pathways into employment.

These initiatives recognize that assessing a qualification and successfully integrating a professional into the workforce are related, but different, outcomes.

This is why recognition alone cannot measure successful integration.

Licensing and credential assessments tell us who has met important professional requirements, but labour-market outcomes tell us whether internationally educated professionals can ultimately use their training.