Brampton,Ontario
Filipino Canadian doctors raise funds for scholarship
The Filipino Canadian Medical Association’s (FCMA) ‘Hiraya’ Gala raised $12,000 for a scholarship fund at the University of Toronto.
The successful event the Millennium Gardens Banquet Hall in Brampton, Ontario held on May 2, 2026 brought together over 300 physicians, students and professionals.
Led by FCMA’s Dr. Gian Agtarap, the Gala was partly a response to a challenge thrown by Dr. Ivy Oandasan for the medical profession to come together to raise the profile of Filipino doctors in Canada.
Filipino-Canadians are the third most underrepresented physician group in Canada, according to Dr. Oandasan, an associate professor at the University of Toronto and Associate Director of Academic Family Medicine at the College of Family Physicians of Canada.
“Filipinos are the fourth-largest visible minority in Canada. We are one of the leading sources of immigrants to this country. We are everywhere in healthcare — in nursing, in personal support work, in long-term care.
But in medicine, we are nearly invisible, “ she asserts.
In her keynote address, Dr. Oandasan lauded Dr. Agtarap’s work in organizing his colleagues by starting the Univ. of Toronto’s Filipino Association of Medical Students when he was still a medical student .
The association is now thriving and has become a model that other schools are looking at, with branches at the University of Manitoba, Western University, and next at the University of British Columbia.
“He did not wait for permission. He did not wait for a senior physician to start it for him. He built it. Gian, thank you for showing us what leadership looks like when you are still in training,” said Dr. Oandasan.
She encouraged her audience to ”stop being polite about our absence and start filling the room.”
The daughter of immigrant parents who came to Canada in the 1960s, Oandasan was born and grew up in Winnipeg. She said her parents had very little when they arrived but they had “ faith – faith that if by working hard, their children could have more.” Her younger sister Cheryl is also a Medical Doctor who practices in Saudi Arabia.
Excerpts of Dr.Oandasan’s address:
“So tonight is a thank you to them. And a question for us.
Are we doing enough for the ones coming next?
“When the data is disaggregated, Filipino-Canadians are the third most underrepresented physician group in Canada — behind our Indigenous and Black colleagues, whose underrepresentation has rightly received national attention. Ours has not. There is almost no published Canadian research on it. The few numbers we have are striking. At the University of Toronto — in one of the largest Filipino populated cities in North America — there have been years where only eight medical students across the entire r year MD Program identified as Filipino-heritage. Eight.
Why?
Part of it is structural. Nursing and caregiving roles are more secure choices for Filipino immigrants, and that pathway is familiar. Medicine feels like a gamble with an undergraduate degree without the guarantee of getting into medicine. Those who were physicians in the Philippines unrecognized here in Canada must invest time and effort and monies to be requalified with no guarantees. So generation after generation, we steer our brightest into safer career choices – which make us invisible.
The structure of medical school admissions system itself is a challenge and in my 30 year career in medical education we are seeing changes that are now benefiting Filipino students. Despite being smart and capable, our students often compete with others who have a physician as a parent, have a network of support guiding career decisions starting in elementary school and monies to take pre-MCAT courses. Our students lack social capital to get them ahead.
Dr. Marck Mercado is now on faculty in the Department of Family Medicine at McMaster University. That matters. Faculty positions are where the next generation gets shaped — who gets mentored, who gets a reference letter, who gets believed in.
Dr. Agtarap is now a family physician.
These two are not exceptions. They are a signal. They are what happens when we stop being polite about our absence and start filling the room.
So I end my time with you with a call to action.
To senior physicians: mentor one Filipino learner this year. One. Encourage interest in medicine. Read their personal statement. Write the reference letter. Make the introduction. Someone did that for us. It is our turn.
To mid-career colleagues: say yes to leadership. Say yes to the committee, the board, the deanship you have talked yourself out of. You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be present.
To our young physicians and trainees: you are not alone anymore. The Filipino Canadian Medical Association is here. FAMS is here. We are here.
And one last thing. Filipino humility is a gift. But humility without visibility becomes erasure. We can be humble and present. We can be gracious and take up space. Both can be true.
My parents wanted their children to have a seat at the table in Canada. Tonight we are at the table. Let us make room for others creating more tables for our community.
Mabuhay tayong lahat. Maraming salamat po.