Council welcomes new members

The Medical Council of Canada (MCC) welcomed several new members to its Council during the 105^th Annual Meeting, September 17-19, 2017, in Ottawa.

The MCC’s policy direction is set by the Council, which comprises representatives of

• all provincial and territorial regulatory authorities
• each Canadian faculty of medicine
• the public
• medical students
• medical residents

Among the new faces at this meeting are the following:

Dr. Martin Laliberté is the new representative of the Collège des médecins du Québec. An emergency physician at the McGill University Health Centre and Assistant Professor at McGill University, Dr. Laliberté is also a medical toxicologist with the Quebec Poison Control Centre and for the Quebec coroner’s office. He says that he hopes to integrate well on Council and quickly develop a sense of the MCC’s future challenges.

Dr. Patricia Houston represents the University of Toronto on the Council. She is currently Vice Dean of the MD Program at the university. In that role, she emphasizes team-based, patient-centred approaches to education and health care. Dr. Houston is also a staff anesthesiologist and critical care physician at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, where she has previously served as Vice-President of Education. Dr. Houston looks forward to contributing to the MCC’s communication with students and academic institutions. She would like to better understand both the examination process and how decisions are made and changes implemented, in order to gauge the impact on university medical students.

Dr. Janet van Vlymen is a representative of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) on the Council. An anesthesiologist at Kingston General Hospital and Hotel Dieu Hospital in Kingston, Ontario, she also teaches students and residents on a daily basis as an Associate Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine at Queen’s University. Dr. Vlymen has joined the CPSO Council as the representative of Queen’s, and is involved with the CPSO’s committees on education and quality assurance. She says this experience allows her “to bring the perspective of the medical regulators on policies, registration, quality, and other issues to the MCC.” She hopes her academic and regulatory authority experience will help the MCC advance its mission to evaluate physician competence.

Dr. Scott McLeod joins the Council representing the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta, where he took the helm as Registrar on July 1, 2017. Dr. McLeod was previously Deputy Surgeon General of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), responsible for all clinical programs. He has provided leadership in health care governance, quality and patient safety, and mental health for CAF Health Services. As a CAF physician, “I have had the privilege of working in a variety of locations around the world,” he said, including Haiti, Kosovo, and Kandahar, Afghanistan, “with medical practitioners who are equally diverse. These experiences confirmed in my mind that Canada produces some of the best physicians in the world, and many nations look upon us as the standard to meet.”

Student and resident members

• Cassendre Latourelle-Théberge, resident member, Fédération des médecins résidents du Québec
• Philippe Simard, student member, Fédération des médecins résidents du Québec
• Yipeng Ge, student member, Canadian Deferation of Medical Students

Returning members

• Kent Stobart, University of Saskatchewan
• Jay Rosenfield, University of Western Ontario