Isabelle Branco and Jean-Louis Ménard, these two French doctors who were caught in the bureaucratic maze of Immigration and Citizenship Canada, finally received a temporary work permit on Wednesday. The document should allow them to stay in the country for at least three years.
“Since February, we have been waiting for these permits. Finally, our lives will be able to return to normal. For us, this is really good news,” rejoiced Isabelle Branco, reached by telephone on Wednesday evening.
The two doctors, who had been based in the Laurentians for five years, had to stop their practice abruptly on Friday after the renewal of their work permits was canceled following a mix-up. However, between them they follow some 2,700 patients.
Originally, the federal government maintained that Isabelle Branco never provided the “valid employment identification number” necessary for her application. The main interested party, however, assured that she had uploaded it on September 14, i.e. 12 days before receiving a refusal letter.
This affair caused a stir in several media, including The Press, at a time when the shortage of family doctors is hurting everywhere in Quebec. In the midst of a crisis, Ottawa finally regularized their situation on Monday, but the two doctors were still waiting to know the details of their work permits.
“Yes, the bureaucracy is sometimes heavy, but it is thanks to the work of civil servants and not politicians that we were able to rectify the situation,” Immigration Minister Marc Miller wrote on X on Monday.
He thus responded to Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, who had seized on this story by maintaining that “Trudeau officials are preventing 2,700 Quebecers from having a doctor.” “I will remove bureaucracy to allow immigrant doctors to treat Canadians,” he said, to which Mr. Miller retorted that “governing is more than bogus slogans.”
Towards permanent residence
Relieved, Isabelle Branco and Jean-Louis Ménard are now working to obtain their permanent residence, which would allow them to stay in Canada well beyond three years.
In recent days, Minister Miller’s entourage had clearly suggested that the two doctors’ applications for permanent residency were at the “final stage” and that a response should be sent to them quickly. “I’m not going to let go of the matter,” assures M.me Branco on this.
In her eyes, “it was above all the fact of having been pushed against the wall” which really caused the problem in this whole story. “It’s this position of being ejectable that hurt us. We came here, we invested, and then overnight, we were told: it’s over, you are pawns, you must leave. It’s not easy to live with,” she regrets.
The two doctors say today that they have “a thought for the patients who must have been stressed and anxious during all of this”. “We know that for some of them, it meant saying that they had to put themselves back on a waiting list for several years to hope to find someone they could trust. We hope they are relieved and we think of them,” concludes Isabelle Branco.
With Mylène Crête, The Press