It has become a deeply unfortunate Canadian cliché: the Uber driver with a medical degree from their country of origin. In a nation where families can wait six months or more just to find a family doctor, this represents a staggering waste of human talent and a systemic failure. But this tragedy is not unique to medicine. I see it firsthand in my own field. I currently have three graduate students at the University of Ottawa who hold counseling degrees from their home countries, yet they face insurmountable barriers to registration from the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario, their regulatory body. This forces us to ask an urgent and uncomfortable related question: How many perfectly qualified psychologists are driving for ride-share apps while a child in crisis waits a year or more for mental health care?
We live in a multicultural nation, and for a province as large and diverse as Ontario, our mental health workforce must reflect the global communities it serves. For too long, however, the registration process has maintained a restrictive and insular focus, creating unnecessary barriers for highly qualified psychologists trained outside of Canada and the United States. Now, a new set of proposed amendments by the College of Psychologists and Behaviour Analysts of Ontario (CPBAO) promises to begin changing that, taking a long-overdue step toward a more equitable system.
At the heart of these changes is a crucial question of fairness. The College’s mandate under the Regulated Health Professions Act is to ensure the public has access to adequate numbers of competent professionals. Yet, the Office of the Fairness Commissioner (OFC) has repeatedly identified the College’s practices as a “moderate to high risk” for being unfair to applicants. A recent study I published found that applicants with overseas degrees were denied registration at twice the rate of Canadians, with no clear path to remediate identified deficiencies (Faber, Williams, et al., 2023). For years, regulators have raised concerns that the College’s rigid rules—particularly its Canada-US-centric focus on credentials—unjustly restrict access to the profession for qualified individuals.
The proposed amendments directly address this critical feedback by creating a framework for approving accrediting bodies internationally and establishing “substantial equivalence” to streamline registration for psychologists from other jurisdictions.
A Critical Equity Lens
Due to the national shortage of mental health providers, this is a vital step in the right direction. However, for this reform to be truly meaningful, we must apply a critical equity lens to its implementation. The consultation documents use the United Kingdom and Australia as examples of the international bodies that might be recognized. While these are a logical starting point due to similarities in language and regulatory models, we must be vigilant that our efforts do not inadvertently replicate a system that favors applicants from predominantly White, Anglophone nations. The legacy of colonialism in our professions means we often view standards from some countries as more acceptable or inherently trustworthy than others. This is a form of systemic bias that we must actively dismantle, not unintentionally reinforce (Faber, Williams, et al., 2023).
True global fairness requires a more proactive and decolonized approach. Regulators must move beyond these initial examples and undertake a comprehensive, global review of accreditation standards. Let us do the hard work of identifying all jurisdictions—in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America—whose training is equivalent or even superior to our own, and preapprove them. This is the only way to build a registration system that is not only modern but genuinely equitable, ensuring that we are not leaving a world of talent behind simply because their credentials are less familiar to us.
Out of Sight, Out of Mind
The urgency of this global search for talent is underscored by the stark reality of our domestic situation. My recent paper, “Out of sight, out of mind,” provides the first quantitative evidence of the severe underrepresentation of registered racialized psychologists in Ontario (Faber et al., 2025). Our comprehensive analysis of over 1,400 psychology faculty found that among those registered to practice in the province, a staggering 83 percent are White, while only 11 percent were people of colour. This disparity is not confined to one area; it is pervasive across all professional subspecialties. Crucially, our study demonstrated that this underrepresentation is the result of systemic barriers, not a lack of interest in clinical practice. This directly contributes to the barriers to care faced by racialized communities, where patients struggle to find culturally and linguistically competent clinicians who understand their lived experiences (Faber, Osman, & Williams, 2023).
Internationally Trained Psychologists Needed
The public interest rationale for this shift is critical and extends across Canada. Internationally trained psychologists bring the linguistic diversity and cultural competence desperately needed to serve our nation’s multicultural fabric. By creating fair and global pathways for them to become licensed, our profession can directly address critical workforce shortages and improve access to care for immigrant and racialized communities from coast to coast. This is a Canadian crisis of wasted talent and unmet need.
The amendments proposed in Ontario are therefore more than a provincial update, but serve as a national test case. They offer a clear path away from the protectionist gatekeeping that has defined our past and toward a modern, globally minded approach to regulation that Canada desperately needs. This is a critical reform that will strengthen our profession and enhance public protection, but only if regulators across the country show the same courage to apply our principles of fairness to every corner of the globe.