Eight new seats will be added for francophone medical students at the Université de Moncton starting in the fall of 2026.
“A significant fraction of our population is primarily francophone. Many speak English, but some don’t,” said John Dornan, the province’s minister of health.
“It’s very important to get people the right care at the right time in the right place. And for some New Brunswickers that are unilingual French, it’s very important to bring French doctors to that community.”
The Centre de formation médicale du Nouveau-Brunswick in Moncton is a partnership between the Université de Moncton and Université de Sherbrooke, and currently has 32 seats for medical students in each incoming class.
The increase will bring the number of students for French speakers up to 40 — on par with the number of English seats for future doctors at Dalhousie University Medicine New Brunswick, located in Saint John.
New Brunswick will fund an additional eight medical school seats for francophone students at l’Université de Moncton. This brings the university’s total number of seats up to 40.
“People at that age tend to, you know, meet people, get married, bring families,” said Dornan. “So it’s very important. If we can get people to come here [for] part of their education, [it] is one of the stronger recruitment tools.”
The total cost of adding these seats is about $77 million, according to the province.
The provincial government is also providing funding for eight additional medical residency seats, for students to complete post-graduate training in their chosen specialty. Those seats are expected to be available by 2030, increasing the total number of francophone residency seats in the province from 18 to 26.
“The eight new seats will be spread amongst family medicine and specialty teams,” Dornan said.
There are 32 English residency spots available through Dalhousie Medicine in Saint John, and 38 residency seats in other provinces are funded by New Brunswick.
The government has also promised $1.8 million this year toward the residency seats, and $3.6 million in subsequent years.
‘An honour to stay inside of my community’
Cynthia Leger grew up bilingual in Dieppe, speaking both French and English. But when the time came for her to pursue medical school, she wanted to do it in French.
“I’m very fairly comfortable working in French and English and I did some rotations in both languages as well,” said the fourth-year medical student, who is 23.
“But I would like to work with the French, having grown up speaking French as a minority language in our province.”
Leger plans to do her residency in family medicine and wants to practise in the Moncton area eventually.
“Having done all my training here with doctors from here, it really just would be an honour to stay inside of my community here,” she said.
Leger says she hopes expanding the number of seats in her program will encourage more francophone doctors-to-be to stay in the province.
“Especially for more minority French-speaking communities, especially up north in the province, I think [it] is something that’s very important,” she said.
An additional $4 million in funding is being provided for infrastructure updates in Moncton so that the Université de Moncton can support even more medical students in the future, the province said.
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