Landings LLP is honoured to have received the 2026 Corporate Ally & Health Justice Award from the Black Physicians’ Association of Ontario (BPAO), recognizing the firm’s work on behalf of internationally trained physicians and its contribution to advancing more equitable pathways into medicine.
The award was accepted by Allan Rock, C.M., K.C., and Warda Shazadi Meighen, who led a constitutional challenge to Ontario’s medical-residency eligibility policy under sections 6, 7 and 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Ontario introduced the policy after the 2026 residency application process had already begun. It would have prevented international medical graduates from competing in the first iteration of the match (which accounts for 92% of Ontario’s residency positions) unless they had completed at least two years of high school in Ontario – a restriction that disproportionately affected immigrant physicians.
Justice Koehnen halted the policy from coming into effect, finding a strong prima facie case that it violated sections 6 and 15 of the Charter. The Court found that the high-school requirement operated as a proxy for national origin and that its effects could cause irreparable harm to a physician’s career trajectory, life plan and sense of self. The decision allowed hundreds of internationally trained physicians to compete for residency positions in 2025. Ontario has since withdrawn the policy.
The success of this challenge belongs foremost to the late Dr. Dominique Vervoort, who began the challenge in the final stages of his life, the Black Physicians of Canada, Dr. Mojola Omole, Julie Sobowale, Dr. Anna Dare, and our clients Dr. Nathália Da Silveira and Dr. Ilana Polegatto Lagosta, whose courage has had an impact far beyond this litigation – on hundreds of physicians and on the Ontarians who stand to benefit from their care.
As always, we are deeply grateful to Borden Ladner Gervais LLP and Goldblatt Partners LLP for their continual partnership on urgent and constitutional and humanitarian cases, and to the many experts whose contributions were central to the litigation.
The award is particularly meaningful coming from the BPAO, which has supported Black physicians in Ontario since 2007 through mentorship, scholarships, advocacy and work addressing race-based disparities in health care.