Internationally trained doctors: source verification through physiciansapply.ca, the MCCQE and NAC Examination, the CaRMS residency route, practice-ready assessment programs, and the provincial licence that actually lets you practise.
Applies in: across Canada
Your medical degree is real, and no single Canadian office can convert it into a right to practise. The Medical Council of Canada assesses and examines; the college in the province or territory where you will work licenses. Everything in this guide is organized around that split, and around the two routes that actually lead to supervised practice: a Canadian residency through the national match, or a practice-ready assessment for doctors who already practised independently abroad. This guide states no fees, no processing times, and no pass rates, because those live on the bodies' own pages and change without notice. Where a figure is stated, it was read on the body's page on October 29, 2026.
The Licentiate of the Medical Council of Canada is the national credential most regulators build into their requirements, and its school criteria are the first gate. As of January 26, 2026, a graduate in medicine must hold a degree from a medical school accredited by the Committee on Accreditation of Canadian Medical Schools, a medical school listed in the World Directory of Medical Schools with a sponsor note indicating it is an acceptable medical school in Canada, or a United States School of Osteopathic Medicine accredited by the American Osteopathic Association. Check the World Directory entry for your school and confirm the sponsor note is there — a listing without it does not meet the criterion. If your school does not fit any of the three types, resolve that question with the Council and the provincial regulator before spending on examinations, because an examination pass does not substitute for the school criterion.
Source verification is the process by which the Council sends your credential to the institution that issued it and asks that institution to confirm it issued the credential and that it is authentic, accurate, and valid. The Council completes this in collaboration with the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates, a division of Intealth. You submit the request through your physiciansapply.ca account, and the documents you submit are added to that account for sharing with regulators and other organizations. One exception matters: candidates focused on practising in Ontario only should contact the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario for source verification, rather than going through the Council.
Start this step as soon as you know you need a credential verified. The Council says so itself, and the reason is the institution at the other end: the Council's page warns that an institution's reply can take three months or longer, that the time cannot be guaranteed, and that if no response arrives after three requests, no further action is taken until a response is received. You can follow up directly with the issuing institution once your account shows the request as sent for source verification, and you can ask for the credentials to be sent by courier at your own expense if the institution is not responding. If you already hold a verification through the Commission's Electronic Portfolio of International Credentials, the United States Medical Licensing Examination, the Australian Medical Council, or the Health Professions Council of South Africa, tell the Council through your account — a matching prior verification may be reused — but you still create the request and pay the fee. When the verification certificate is completed, your account status updates within five to ten days and you receive a notification.
The Medical Council of Canada Qualifying Examination, formerly called MCCQE Part I, is the written qualifying examination. It assesses critical medical knowledge and clinical decision-making at the level expected of a medical student completing a Canadian medical degree, as preparation for supervised practice. A pass result on this examination is one of the two substantive criteria for the Licentiate under the January 26, 2026 rules, alongside the source-verified degree. You may apply for the examination up to fifteen months before you are expected to complete all medical degree requirements, and the Council publishes session dates on its own pages — check the current sessions rather than relying on any date in this guide. This guide states no question count, no sitting length, and no pass mark, because those details live on the Council's examination pages and are the first things to go stale in a secondary summary.
The National Assessment Collaboration Examination is the clinical examination in the pair. The Council's CaRMS page states that international medical graduates, graduates of United States osteopathic schools, and graduates of United States allopathic schools who graduated on or after July 1, 2025, who want to apply for the R-1 Main Residency Match, must provide results for both the Qualifying Examination and the National Assessment Collaboration Examination — and may take them in either order. You may apply for the National Assessment Collaboration Examination if you are expected to complete all medical degree requirements within fifteen months of the examination date, subject to the application deadlines for the session you choose. Do not let the word "collaboration" mislead you: this is an examination of clinical readiness for residency, not a credential review, and the match requires its result, not just its registration.
The R-1 Main Residency Match is the national application and matching process for entry into Canadian postgraduate medical training programs, at the first postgraduate year. Basic eligibility for international graduates requires Canadian citizenship or permanent residence, with some exceptions; a medical degree obtained, or in the process of being obtained, by July 1 of the match year from a qualifying institution; passed results on both the National Assessment Collaboration Examination and the Qualifying Examination; and a Medical Identification Number for Canada entered into the application. Individual provinces and residency programs add their own requirements and restrictions on top of that baseline, because provinces and faculties of medicine run the programs.
Three provincial assessments must be checked before you apply, not after. British Columbia requires the University of British Columbia Clinical Assessment Program for internationally trained doctors seeking a residency position in that province. Alberta requires the Alberta International Medical Graduate Program assessment. Quebec is a separate system altogether: you must have met the requirements of the Collège des médecins du Québec before applying to the match, including prior recognition of equivalence of your Doctor of Medicine degree from the Collège, and the Quebec government requires that you meet its definition of a Quebec resident for the regular quota. After matching, residency training leads to certification examinations — the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada for specialists, the College of Family Physicians of Canada for family medicine — and certification is part of what the provincial regulator requires for full licensure.
Practice-ready assessment programs offer a supervised clinical assessment as an alternative to a full Canadian residency, for doctors who trained and practised independently abroad. They are provincial programs, not a national stream, and the list changes as programs open and close — so the only safe way to name them is from the Council's current partner-organizations list, checked at the time you apply. On the list as read on October 29, 2026: British Columbia lists both the Clinical Assessment Program and Practice-Ready Assessment — Physicians for BC; Saskatchewan lists the Saskatchewan International Physician Practice Assessment; Newfoundland and Labrador lists its Practice Ready Assessment; Alberta lists the Alberta International Medical Graduate Program; Manitoba lists the University of Manitoba international graduate and clinician assessment programs. Ontario lists Touchstone Institute and the Northern Ontario School of Medicine among its organizations, and every province's college appears on the same list as a credential recipient.
Do not read that list as a ranking. No source this guide found ranks these programs by ease, and the honest comparison is one program at a time, on its own page, for the province where you intend to practise — including whether that program is currently accepting applicants at all. A practice-ready assessment does not license you in a second province: the licence still comes from the college where you will practise, and a second province means a second application.
The Licentiate is granted by the Council and is part of the requirements provincial and territorial regulators set for issuing a licence. Physicians whose names are included in the Canadian Medical Register are known as Licentiates. Effective January 26, 2026, the Council removed the twelve-month postgraduate training requirement that previously gated the Licentiate: eligibility now rests on a pass result on the Qualifying Examination and a successfully source-verified medical degree, plus payment of any outstanding Council fees. If you applied for the Qualifying Examination after January 26, 2026, the digital Licentiate number is issued automatically at no additional cost; if you applied before that date, the Council's transition table governs whether a fee applies and whether the number issues on request. The printed Testamur and wallet card remain available as optional items for a fee. If a guide you are reading still tells you the Licentiate requires twelve months of postgraduate training, it predates the change.
Quebec is outside the standard national sequence in the ways that matter most. The Collège des médecins du Québec must recognize the equivalence of your medical degree before you apply to the CaRMS match for a Quebec program, and Quebec's residency definition governs the regular quota. The Council's partner list includes the Collège alongside Quebec universities, but the Collège's own pages set the conditions. If Quebec is where you will practise, treat the Collège as the first stop and the national bodies as the examinations behind its requirements, not as a route that bypasses it.
For immigration purposes, the Medical Council of Canada is the designated body that must assess a primary medical diploma for physicians seeking an educational credential assessment — the national credentials guide on this site covers that designation and its current-list warning. But an immigration assessment is not a licence, and a licence is not immigration status. The residency match itself requires Canadian citizenship or permanent residence, with some exceptions, so the order of the two processes matters: an examination pass does not create the status the match requires, and an immigration assessment does not waive the examinations. Confirm the current designated-organizations list on the immigration department's page before paying for any assessment, because the list changes.
It does not state fees, processing times, pass rates, examination question counts, or program eligibility rules such as years of practice, because none of those were verified on the bodies' own pages for this guide and all of them change. It does not rank provinces or programs. It does not say you can work clinically while being assessed, because no regulator page for restricted or provisional practice was verified for this guide. And it gives no advice on whether you qualify for any licence: it tells you which body decides, what that body asks for, and where to read the requirement yourself.
No Part II step appears in the current Licentiate criteria. The Medical Council of Canada's Licentiate page, as updated for January 26, 2026, names a pass result on the Medical Council of Canada Qualifying Examination — the exam formerly called MCCQE Part I — together with a source-verified medical degree. Older guides that list Part I and Part II as two current hurdles describe a retired sequence, not the criteria in force now. If a program or regulator page you are reading still names Part II, check its date against the Council's current Licentiate page before treating it as a requirement.
Yes. The Council's CaRMS page states that applicants for the R-1 Main Residency Match need results for both examinations and may take them in the order they prefer. Neither exam is a prerequisite for sitting the other. What matters for the match is that both results are in hand, along with the other basic eligibility items, by the time your application is assessed — so plan around the session dates for each exam rather than assuming one must come first.
It depends on when you graduated. Under the CaRMS R-1 eligibility criteria, graduates of United States allopathic medical schools with a graduation date on or after July 1, 2025 fall in the international graduate stream, while those who graduated on or before June 30, 2025 fall in the United States graduate stream. Graduates of United States osteopathic schools are a separate applicant type again. The stream matters because programs and provinces set different requirements and restrictions by stream, so confirm which stream your graduation date puts you in before you compare yourself with other applicants.
The verification step can start as soon as you know you need a credential verified — that is the Council's own advice, because an institution's reply can take three months or longer and no timeline can be guaranteed. Open the physiciansapply.ca account, submit the source verification request, and let the institution's reply run while you prepare for the examinations. Examination sittings have their own session schedules and locations, published on the Council's pages, so confirm where and when each sitting is offered before you book travel or assume you can sit from abroad.
Then the current Licentiate criteria are not met on the school side, and that is a problem to resolve before paying for examinations. The criteria admit three school types: a school accredited by the Committee on Accreditation of Canadian Medical Schools, a school listed in the World Directory of Medical Schools with a sponsor note indicating it is an acceptable medical school in Canada, or a United States School of Osteopathic Medicine accredited by the American Osteopathic Association. If your school is listed without the sponsor note, or not listed at all, ask the Council and the regulator in the province where you want to practise what, if anything, cures that — do not assume an examination pass substitutes for it.
This guide makes no claim either way, because the answer is set by the regulator in the province where you would work, and no regulator page for restricted, provisional, or supervised practice was verified for this guide. Practising medicine without the licence that province requires is not a paperwork gap. Before you accept any clinical work, find the restricted-licence or provisional-licence page of that province's college and read what it allows, who must supervise you, and what the licence is called. Do not take a recruiter's word for it.
No. A practice-ready assessment program belongs to a province and a program, and the licence that follows it still comes from that province's college. The programs on the Council's partner list change as programs open and close, so a program that existed when a guide was written may not be the program operating when you apply. Compare programs one at a time on their own pages, for the province where you intend to practise, and treat any claim that one province's program is the easy route as unproven unless that program's own page states its eligibility rules.
No. The Licentiate of the Medical Council of Canada is a national credential that forms part of what provincial and territorial regulators require before they issue a licence. Physicians whose names are entered in the Canadian Medical Register are known as Licentiates. The licence itself is issued by the medical regulatory authority in the province or territory where you will practise, and it is valid only there. Holding the Licentiate without that province's licence does not authorize practice.