Canada had a well-earned reputation as a safe haven for those fleeing the U.S. during the Vietnam War. It now appears that reputation is enjoying a resurgence, but for slightly different reasons.
I wrote previously about the chill that has descended over American universities for hosting protests that offend some. Expulsions, recindments of degrees and censorship of thought and speech are becoming commonplace at institutions that were formerly bastions of free thought and expression. That is more than some can take.
Three Yale professors – all of them vocal critics of President Donald Trump – have recently taken up roles at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.
Earlier this week, philosophy professor Jason Stanley, who has written about fascism and propaganda, announced that he would leave Yale for U of T.
He joins professors Marci Shore and Timothy Snyder, who specialize in Eastern European history. The two academics are married and arrived in Canada last August, on a sabbatical from Yale. Mr. Trump’s re-election in November factored heavily into the decision to stay in Canada, according to Prof. Shore.
“There’s a state of dazed horror following the election. After we calmed down and started to think it through, I clearly didn’t want to go back,” said Prof. Shore, who expressed guilt about leaving the United States, but decided she didn’t want to take their children back there.
Prof. Snyder has written extensively on tyranny. In January, U.S. Vice-President JD Vance tweeted that he was an “embarrassment” to Yale after the professor criticized the nomination of Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense.
Professor Shore, Snyder's wife, knows of what she speaks.
“As a historian of the 1930s, of totalitarianism … of this unhinging from empirical reality that happened in Russia, I was able to see certain things sooner in my own country than I would have otherwise been able to see,” she said.
“With Trump on the rise, you could feel the potential for civil war, for more mass scale violence, for the brutal deportations you’re seeing now, the idea that there’s an enemies list. I’m a historian of totalitarianism. I know where an enemies list could go.”
That increasingly oppressive, McCarthy-era-like atmosphere has also prompted a noted Canadian heart surgeon, who was planning to leave, to stay right here.
Renowned Ottawa heart surgeon Marc Ruel was planning a move to the United States last year, with the University of California, San Francisco "thrilled to announce" that he would be leading a heart division in their surgery department.
But Donald Trump's threats toward Canada were such that Ruel has now decided to remain in Canada.
"Canada is under duress right now," he told CBC. "I felt my role and duty at this point was to directly serve my country from within."
Ruel says he considers his skills a product of Canada, abilities that he was ready to share globally when he accepted the position at UCSF last year.
But Trump's imposition of tariffs and threats to annex the country that's historically been its closest ally has made geopolitics an unavoidable issue.
And those issues could, in fact, lead to a reverse brain drain.
Concerns over the political climate in the U.S. has opened a "floodgate" of inquiries about moving to Canada, according to recruiter Michelle Flynn.
To deal with the influx of inquiries from American physicians wanting to come to Canada, Flynn said she is now conducting interviews five days a week, up from three days a week previously.
"We're getting 60-plus physicians coming to and registering on our website a month," she said.
Ontario's College of Physicians and Surgeons has also noted increases in American interest.
After introducing [a] new licensing pathway, the CPSO registered 351 U.S. physicians between 2023 and the end of 2024, a spokesperson said.
So far this year, CPSO has received registration applications from 240 physicians who are U.S. educated. Most of them are currently practicing in the U.S., the spokesperson said.
No one likes the economic uncertainty and fear that are consequences of crazed American policy. Nonetheless, if one is looking for bright spots in all of the gloom, this retention and acquisition of intellectual capital is surely one of them.
