MW sits in her living room in her home in Nova Scotia on Tuesday. Police and court documents allege MW was sexually assaulted by Sanjeev Sirpal during a visit to the emergency room in January.Ingrid Bulmer/the globe and mail
Canada’s first interprovincial physician licensing program is under review by regulators after a doctor who had lost his licence in Quebec was able to continue practising in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, where he now stands accused of sexually assaulting six patients.
The doctor, Sanjeev Sirpal, 39, had his licence revoked in Quebec in 2022 for failing to disclose that he had once been dismissed from medical school. The Quebec College of Physicians, the province’s regulatory body for doctors, began investigating him after a woman came forward with an allegation of sexual assault against him.
He now faces charges for sexual assaults that allegedly occurred later, at New Brunswick’s Sackville Memorial Hospital and Edmundston Regional Hospital, and Nova Scotia’s Cumberland Regional Health Care Centre.
At the time Dr. Sirpal began working in the Cumberland Regional Health Care Centre’s emergency room in Amherst, N.S., in 2023, he had also been charged criminally with assaulting his former girlfriend and trying to get her to forge a document to obstruct the investigation that led the Quebec college to delicense him.
Dr. Sirpal's Quebec licence was revoked in 2022.NB Lung Website
The RCMP believe there are additional victims, including in Quebec. The allegations have not been proven in court. Dr. Sirpal’s lawyers did not respond to requests for comment.
The licensing program, known as the Atlantic Registry, is a Canadian first – a way for physicians in the region to work interprovincially without reapplying and repeating evaluations for licensure.
The Canadian Medical Association has been actively advocating for pan-Canadian licensure, holding up the Atlantic Registry as a model to follow. Physicians would be more mobile, alleviating pressure on doctors serving patients in rural communities, the CMA says.
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To get on the Atlantic Registry, a physician must submit a form through their home regulatory college, attesting to their eligibility for the registry, and affirming that they have not been subject to any disciplinary, sanction, or revocation issues in their medical career. Upon an internal review and $500 payment, the college recommends licensure to the other provinces in the region.
But Dr. Sirpal’s case has prompted the four Atlantic colleges to consider the need for more rigorous screening.
Dr. Sirpal joined the Atlantic Registry in September, 2023, a few months after it launched, on the recommendation of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New Brunswick, said Gus Grant, the CEO and registrar of the Nova Scotia College of Physicians and Surgeons.
The New Brunswick college had issued him a licence on Feb. 1, 2022, six months after Quebec college investigators had questioned him.
Dr. Sirpal signed a document attesting to his eligibility for the registry, but Dr. Grant said it appears he wasn’t truthful.
In light of Dr. Sirpal’s case, Dr. Grant said the four Atlantic colleges plan to review the process of licensing doctors for the joint registry, which includes roughly 500 physicians. “This incident is deeply troubling and we’re hopefully going to learn from it so it won’t happen again,” he said.
“As the calls mount for multi-jurisdictional licensure or pan-Canadian licensure, there’s lots of learnings to be drawn.”
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The New Brunswick college declined to answer questions about how Dr. Sirpal was able to obtain a licence when a disciplinary probe was under way with its Quebec counterpart, or why he was allowed to keep his New Brunswick licence after his Quebec licence was revoked.
“While we cannot share details other than what is on our public website about a specific physician, please be assured that our decisions are guided by rigorous criteria based on the information we had at the time,” New Brunswick college registrar Laurie Potter said in an e-mail to The Globe.
However, New Brunswick’s French-language Vitalité Health Network wrote in an e-mail to The Globe that the province’s college reviewed Dr. Sirpal’s file after he lost the right to practise in Quebec and decided to maintain his licence. Dr. Potter did not reply to a request for comment on this.
Dr. Potter said a Certificate of Professional Conduct is required when applying for licensure in New Brunswick, though the college’s website says it “may be requested.” After The Globe brought this to the college’s attention, Dr. Potter said she plans to update the website.
The Quebec college declined to say whether it provided a Certificate of Professional Conduct for Dr. Sirpal. The document would have included the correspondence about a doctor under investigation, according to information on the college’s website.
After a complaint in March, 2025, the New Brunswick college placed restrictions on Dr. Sirpal, including that he needed a chaperone when examining genitals or breasts. As a result, he was taken off the Atlantic Registry.
Four months later, based on new information, the college suspended Dr. Sirpal, pending the outcome of an investigation. He is now facing three sexual-assault charges in New Brunswick and three in Nova Scotia stemming from his work in hospitals. The incidents, involving six alleged victims, date from last year to as late as August, 2025.
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Some of the alleged victims were shocked to learn about Dr. Sirpal’s disciplinary issues and criminal charges in Quebec, and called for more transparency and accountability.
“What’s wrong with the health care system that allows this to happen?” said a woman whom The Globe is referring to by her initials, MW, because her identity is protected by a publication ban. “How come he slipped through the cracks?”
MW said she went to the emergency room in Amherst on Jan. 14, 2025, for pain that she later learned was from a tumour on her spine. Dr. Sirpal is alleged to have sexually assaulted her during that visit, according to court documents.
Dr. Sirpal has a lengthy history of misrepresentation and ethical disputes that date back to when he was in medical school, according to the Quebec college investigation.
Born in the U.S., he came to Canada with a medical degree from St. Lucia. When he applied for a residency in Quebec in 2016, he did not disclose that he had been dismissed from the University of Miami medical school for unethical conduct, and from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health for failing to disclose his earlier misconduct case.
Dr. Sirpal did part of his residency in La Sarre, Que. According to a summary filed in the college probe, the program director in La Sarre told investigators that Dr. Sirpal “lied regularly” and would book consultation rooms without a camera so supervisors couldn’t monitor his clinical behaviour.
The Quebec college began investigating after a woman consulted him at a Montreal clinic on Feb. 5, 2020, for a suspected concussion. She said he made her undress and examined her vagina and breasts. “I felt very taken advantage of in a vulnerable state,” she wrote in her complaint to the college.
Investigators found that Dr. Sirpal asked to work remotely when the pandemic started in 2020, saying he didn’t want to infect his elderly father. His father had died in 2012.
The Quebec college revoked his licence in October, 2022.
On July 20, 2023, he was charged with assault and dangerous operation of a vehicle. The charge sheet alleges that he assaulted his former girlfriend, Mélina Harrisson, harassing her and driving into her car.
He was also charged with obstructing justice and counselling another person to commit an offence. A prosecution court document alleges that he asked Ms. Harrisson to create a fictitious diary to help him foil the college’s investigation.
He appeared in court for the Quebec criminal charges on Feb. 5, 2025, and was granted bail. He is alleged to have sexually assaulted another woman, BH, the following month in Nova Scotia, according to court documents.
In an interview with The Globe, BH said she felt so uncomfortable when Dr. Sirpal checked her that she abruptly left the examination area at the Cumberland Regional Health Care Centre. “I was deeply scared and disturbed by what happened,” she said.
She called on physician regulators and employers to be more stringent when licensing and hiring doctors, to better protect patients. “Systems of enforcement and professional oversight have to be airtight. That’s a moral issue.”
None of the three health authorities that hired Dr. Sirpal would answer questions from The Globe about hiring practices. Nova Scotia Health and New Brunswick’s Horizon Health Network provided statements saying Dr. Sirpal had done intermittent locum work.
Vitalité said that Dr. Sirpal was dismissed as soon as it learned of criminal charges.
With reports from Stephanie Chambers