When Canada’s medical and law schools decide who gets in, what should matter most – ability or identity? Increasingly, they are privileging race over merit, selecting students based on who they are rather than academic competition.

Canada’s debate over race-based admissions to medical and law schools has reached a critical juncture. Public discussion has focused largely on whether these policies will reduce inequality between racial groups. Far less attention has been paid to a more fundamental question: how are these admission policies influencing admission outcomes? Until now, that question has largely gone unanswered.

My recent national study sought to change that. Requests for race-based application and admission data were sent to 18 law schools and 14 medical schools across Canada. Only six law schools and eight medical schools provided the requested information. Publicly funded institutions should not be able to shield their admissions practices from scrutiny.

The following law schools have refused to provide their race-based application and admissions data unless the following fees are paid.  You can support me in paying for these fees at www.buymeacoffee.com/HelpMeStopRacists Receipts for these payments will be posted at www.YouTube.com/@HelpMeStopRacists

University of Windsor law school ($350); University of Western Ontario ($120); Toronto Metropolitan University ($120) 

Where data was available, the results are deeply troubling. First, racial segregation and discrimination are evident in medical and law school admissions. These institutions encourage – or require – applicants to identify their race. That information clearly affects outcomes, with academically stronger applicants being rejected, while weaker applicants from preferred racial minority categories are admitted. Between 5 to 10 per cent of medical and law school classes surveyed included university-designated racial-minority applicants who had lower grades and test scores than the applicants with the top-ranked grades and LSAT/MCAT scores. Second, applicants who fell outside designated racial-minority categories, such as being not a visible minority or “non-Black, non-Indigenous” – which would include Asians – experienced the highest levels of discrimination with few exceptions. This conclusion is based on gaps between applicants’ academic rankings and their admission results. Third, this discrimination even affected applicants within the university-designated racial-minority categories. Finally, most medical and law schools refused to release race-based application and admissions data, raising questions about university data transparency and accountability. 

The implications extend far beyond campus politics. Institutional racial discrimination in medical and law school admissions that favours Indigenous, Black and/or other racial minority applicants over non-visible minority or non-Black, non-Indigenous applicants threatens fairness and meritocracy. It also weakens public trust in professions that exercise enormous public authority. Canadians expect medical and law schools to select applicants through transparent, rigorous, and uniformly applied processes – not racial sorting mechanisms that prioritize race over demonstrated academic strength. 

Canada’s approach contrasts sharply with other multi-racial democracies – like Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands – where race is simply not considered in medical or law school admissions. These countries show that a commitment to fairness and equity does not require sacrificing academic competition during the admissions process. Canada’s practice of formal racial categorization as part of its admissions policy is an outlier, not a model.

So, what should be done? My report recommends clear action. First, provincial governments should prohibit the use of race as an admissions criterion for medical and law schools. Second, admissions decisions should be based on competitive academic ranking – grades, LSAT and MCAT scores applied equally to all applicants. Academic rigour must also be restored, including mandatory MCAT and prerequisite science requirements where they have been weakened or eliminated. The current admission system separates applicants by race and gives preferences to some groups but not others. Even if this is legal, it is not fair.

University medical and law schools that refuse to eliminate race from their application process should face consequences, including the immediate suspension of provincial funding to the school. In addition, those schools that refuse to comply should be required to publish annually, on their public websites, anonymized admissions data for each of the applicant racial groups that the university continues to use for medical and law school admissions, according to the three measures of racial discrimination used in this study. 

Defenders of race-based admissions often argue that such policies compensate racial minority applicants for past historical injustices. But substituting past racial discrimination for another simply shifts that discrimination onto others. A more serious approach would focus on early academic support, needs-based assistance, and outreach that helps all students compete on merit, rather than sorting applicants by race, leading to the admission of academically weaker applicants. 

The choice now rests with provincial governments. They can continue to defer to universities that engage in racial segregation and discrimination, or they can act to restore fairness, academic integrity, and public trust. The data already collected – and the data universities have refused to release – suggests that race-based admission policies are not only racially divisive but discriminatory in practice. It should not take court challenges to force action. Elected officials must ensure that university admissions are fair, transparent, and academically sound.

By signing this petition, you support the prohibition of race as an admissions criterion for medical and law schools. We aim to collect enough signatures to present our case to provincial Ministers responsible for funding and regulating university law and medical schools, urging them to prohibit medical and law schools from using the race of an applicant as part of the admissions process and requiring them to only admit those applicants, regardless of race, that have the highest grades/LSAT/MCAT scores. Please sign this petition to advocate for prohibiting race and reinstating merit-based academic competition in our university admission policy to law and medical schools. 

The full study can be downloaded here https://macdonaldlaurier.ca/discrimination-by-design-race-based-admissions-in-canadian-medical-and-law-schools/ or you can watch a 20 minute video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwXr2CyFXwQ&t=8s that provides a summary of the report's findings.