Dr. Michael Antil is one step closer to becoming a Canadian.
The doctor at Toronto’s Albany Medical Clinic was invited by Canada’s immigration department to apply for permanent residency here, giving the North Carolina-native a renewed chance to officially call the city home.
“There was an email from my lawyer, and I looked at it and looked at it and, right away, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh. What is this? This is great,’” Antil said in an interview on Monday, adding he was incredulous at first to see the email given it was a Thursday.
He received an email from his immigration lawyer on Feb. 19, just five days after CTV News Toronto reported on the physician’s odyssey-like battle in his pursuit to be Canadian, a saga rife with delays, points systems and misfiled paperwork.
Antil has two years left on his work permit. With more than 2,100 patients rostered to him, Antil wants to trade in his status as foreign temporary worker to permanent Canadian physician.
“I was super excited. Unfortunately, I didn’t know anybody else in my subway car,” Antil said, recounting when he read the email.
Antil received his invitation to apply for permanent residency through Canada’s express entry stream, which recently opened the doors for international medical doctors so the critical labour gaps in the nation’s health-care system could be addressed.
Ilene Solomon, one of the lawyers working on Antil’s file, said Antil is one of 391 doctors who were invited to apply in this round. Antil accrued 435 points for his immigration score, though the cutoff was 169—a considerably low bar, Solomon notes.
“I did the calculations, and, really, all you needed was that one year of required Canadian physician work experience in the last three years, and you needed to speak English or French at required levels for express entry,” Solomon told CTV News Toronto in an interview Tuesday.
The number of invitations was also markedly low, as an average round typically yields 4,000 invites, Solomon adds.
“Obviously, 391 is a low number,” Solomon said. “But, when you’re considering these are all physicians that have just one year of work experience, one year of full-time work experience in Canada or more, it’s actually a pretty good number.”
While Antil is no doubt excited about his invitation, the 50-year-old pointed to how he has been through this ordeal—or “bureaucratic snafu,” as he calls it—already a couple of times in the last three years.
He compared the feeling to the high emotions felt on one’s wedding day.
“You want it to be perfect, but something always goes wrong, or two or three things always go wrong on your wedding day,” Antil said. “But, as long as you end the day married, then it was a success.”
Solomon says they have 60 days from the time they received their invitation to submit Antil’s application for permanent residency. After, Solomon says the Canadian immigration department has up to seven months to process the applicants in Antil’s class.
The federal government’s move to invite these physicians shows they are interested in bringing in out-of-country doctors to fill the gaps in the country’s health-care system as it provides a viable path to permanent residency, Solomon says, but she says the path forward is still not fully paved.
“These rounds of invitations, there’s no schedule for that,” Solomon said. “We’ve made such great strides since December in this area, but I think this category needs to continue to be used and hopefully, in a predictable manner.”
When Antil does receive his permanent residence status, he says the whole family, and everyone who has supported and helped them along the way, will be invited to celebrate.
“We will open that bottle of champagne that we were given way back in 2023, or probably should get a new one and use it.”
