New BrunswickNew Brunswick will no longer be without an in-province program to train physiotherapists.Province previously funded seats at a school in Quebec CBC News · Posted: Sep 05, 2025 6:34 AM EDT | Last Updated: 2 hours agoPost-Secondary Education and Training Minister Jean-Claude D’Amours announced a new program at the Université de Moncton to train physiotherapists in the province for the first time. (Radio-Canada)New Brunswick will no longer be without an in-province program to train physiotherapists.The province announced Thursday that Université de Moncton will have 12 seats in a new program to train physiotherapists, expected to begin in the 2027-28 school year.”Statistically, professionals who are educated at a post-secondary institution in New Brunswick are more likely to remain in the province after graduation,” said Post-Secondary Education and Training Minister Jean-Claude D’Amours in a press release.Currently the province funds nine seats in a physiotherapy program at the Université de Sherbrooke in Quebec. That funding will be phased out, the release said, and the nine seats — plus three new ones — will be transferred to Moncton.”We are thrilled about the news because that’s something we’ve been advocating for many years,” said Annie Boudreau, president of the New Brunswick Physiotherapy Association, in an interview. “We are aware of the current shortage, which is already large, and that it’s going to be even bigger in the years to come.”The release said funding has not been finalized, but the province “intends to provide financial support for program development and startup costs.”More seats needed, association saysThe association’s website says that physiotherapists “combine in-depth knowledge of how the body works with specialized hands-on clinical skills to assess, diagnose and treat symptoms of illness, injury or disability.”The press release from the province said labour market forecasts show New Brunswick will need 200 more physiotherapists over the next 10 years “due to retirements and increased demand.” Boudreau said the three new seats announced Thursday won’t be enough to cover that need. The group was hoping for 12 new seats instead of the net gain of just three.”So that’s the negative part of that news, because it’s not going to be enough. The positive is they’re going to be in the province. It’s just the beginning.”The College of Physiotherapists of New Brunswick, which regulates the profession, lists 623 physiotherapists actively practising in the province as of 2025. Boudreau said it’s important to have the program here in New Brunswick.”A lot of people when they leave for university, they don’t come back,” she said. Boudreau said there used to be just a shortage of public sector physiotherapists in New Brunswick, but now that shortage has expanded to the private sector as well, leading to longer wait times for the public. ‘In the last four or five years, you’re seeing it more and more,” she said of growing waitlists. Patients are now getting surgeries before being seen by a physiotherapist for conditions that could have been solved if they had been able to be seen by one, she added. “And if we discharged them from our care too early, then they come back because we didn’t completely solve the problem or give them all the tools that they would need to self-manage,” she said.”The population has been suffering from the lack of physiotherapists for quite a few years and it is not easily accessible anywhere.”
Université de Moncton to host province’s first physiotherapy training program
