Waterloo - Psychiatry

McMaster UniversityWaterloo, OntarioCMG stream

Program websiteWebsiteContacts and 4 more links

CaRMS program description, 2027 match, last approved 28 Aug 2026 · See the 2026 version

2027 match programs, from CaRMS as of 5 Oct 2026. Programs can still change until file review opens 26 November; we re-check every two weeks. Always confirm on CaRMS (opens in a new tab).

Positions (approx. quota): 2 positions
Length: 5 years
Stream: CMG
Discipline: Psychiatry
Applications per year: 51–200
Applicants offered interviews: 76–100%
Accreditation: Accredited
CaRMS program ID: 35433

Bands are 5-year averages the program reports to CaRMS. They describe past cycles, not your odds.

Summary

This is a 5-year McMaster psychiatry residency at the Waterloo Regional Campus, focused on care for marginalized and vulnerable populations in a regional or smaller community setting.
Residents rotate through sites including Waterloo Regional Health Network, Guelph General Hospital, Homewood Health Centre and Cambridge Memorial Hospital.
From PGY2, residents choose the site and supervisor for their rotations, and the scholarly requirements include a quality improvement project.

Training

Setting

Regional community

Sites

8 teaching sites

Waterloo Regional Health Network (WRHN)
Grand River Hospital
Waterloo Regional Health Network's Chicopee Site

Show all 8

Guelph General Hospital
Homewood Health Centre
Cambridge Memorial Hospital
Canadian Mental Health Association in Guelph
University of Guelph and the University of Waterloo Student Health Centres

Distributed across a region

Rural exposure

Not stated on CaRMS page

Research

Required · scholarly or quality-improvement project · protected time

Call

In-house call · frequency “approximately 1/7 as a junior resident (PGY1 & 2) and approximately 1/12-15 as a senior resident (PGY3-5)”

Highlights

Academic learning through a 'One Room Schoolhouse' system unique to the Waterloo Regional Campus.
Residents choose their own site and supervisor for psychiatry rotations; they are not assigned to meet clinical needs.
An 8-week resident-designed selective working with marginalized populations.

By year

PGY-1

Emergency Psychiatryfour-week block
selectiveone block
electiveone block
Internal Medicine
Family Medicine
Neurology
Adolescent Medicine
Emergency Medicine
Addictions
core rotation working with the medical team providing care to patients admitted to Psychiatry

PGY-2

General Adult Inpatient Psychiatry6 blocks
General Adult Outpatient Psychiatry6 blocks
Anchored Selective1 block partnered with 1 block at start of PGY3, for total of 2 blocks

PGY-3

Child & Adolescent Psychiatry6 blocks
Geriatric Psychiatry6 blocks

PGY-4

Chronic Care Psychiatry6 blocks
Elective, which may include research4 blocks
Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry3 blocks

From the program's rotation list.

Other rotations

Listed by the program without a single PGY year.

Transition to Discipline Stage of Training (Transition to Discipline · two blocks)
Collaborative Care (Transition to Practice · 3 blocks)
electives (Transition to Practice · 10 blocks)

Selection

Application file components

CV
Electives
Examinations
Extra-curricular
Leadership skills
MSPRs
Personal letters
Reference documents
Research/Publications
Transcripts
Other file component(s)

Return of service

Not stated on CaRMS page. Check the provincial return-of-service rules.

Applications per year

51–200

Applicants offered interviews

76–100%

Interviews

Dates (2027 match)

25 and 28 Jan 2027; 1 Feb 2027

Mode

Virtual

Format

Traditional (one on one/two on one)
Panel

Programs can change interview dates. Confirm on carms.ca.

Info sessions

Thu 15 Oct 20266:00–7:00 pm EST
Meet and greet · Virtual
Link for McMaster University, Thu 15 Oct 2026 (opens in a new tab)

From the program’s CaRMS page (opens in a new tab), read 1 Oct 2026. Dates and times are as the program wrote them, not converted to your time zone. Programs add and change sessions: confirm with the program.

Pay

Provincial scale, last updated 6 Jan 2025 · check the current agreement(opens in a new tab)

Contract expired, may change.

Annual salary by PGY level, Ontario
Level	Annual salary
PGY-1	$73,367 / year
PGY-2	$79,670 / year
PGY-3	$85,564 / year
PGY-4	$92,701 / year
PGY-5	$98,567 / year

One provincial scale for Ontario, set by the resident agreement, so every program there pays the same. Showing the 5 levels this program covers.

Call

Call (provincial max): 7 nights in 28 in-house

The union agreement’s cap for all residents in the province; your program’s actual call schedule may be lighter. Check with the program.

PARO agreement, 1 Jul 2023 to 30 Jun 2026. The term has ended; its terms continue until a new agreement is signed.

Teaching sites

Waterloo Regional Health Network (WRHN) (Waterloo)
Grand River Hospital (Kitchener-Waterloo)
Waterloo Regional Health Network's Chicopee Site
Guelph General Hospital (Guelph)
Homewood Health Centre (Guelph)
Cambridge Memorial Hospital (Cambridge)
Canadian Mental Health Association in Guelph (Guelph)
University of Guelph and the University of Waterloo Student Health Centres

Hospital facts

Hospital size and activity: Ontario doesn't publish this as open data.

Unfilled positions in past years

No repeated vacancies in CaRMS’s lists of open positions, 2019–2026.

Positions at this site, all streams.

A position can go unfilled because of where the site is, because it is open to IMGs only or to another restricted stream, or because the quota changed late. It says nothing about the quality of the training. Verify with the CaRMS lists. Source: CaRMS’s lists of positions open after round 1 and after round 2, as read in October 2026 (latest: 2026 round 1 (CaRMS PDF, opens in a new tab), 2026 round 2 (CaRMS PDF, opens in a new tab)). A site’s numbers are shown when it had positions open after round 1 in at least 2 of 8 years or at least 3 in one year.

Contacts

Grouped by the titles CaRMS lists. The program office (administrators and coordinators) usually answers questions about the program and applying; the director leads the training.

Program officeadministrators and coordinators

wcpgpsyc@mcmaster.ca

Ashley Clark · WRC Program Administrator

Program directors

Dr. Megan Puckering
Associate Program Director
Dr. Amanda Ritsma
Program Director
amanda.ritsma@medportal.ca

Site staffdirectors and coordinators at the teaching sites

Dr. Linda McColl, MD, FRCPC
Regional Education Lead, WRC
lmccoll@homewoodhealth.com

Per CaRMS. Staff change during the cycle, so check the CaRMS program page(opens in a new tab) before emailing.

Location

Waterloo, Ontario

About the city

Public statistics for the place named by this program’s location label, each with its source and reference period. They describe the place, not the program, and are not a ranking. Check each source before you rely on it.

Climate

Canadian Climate Normals, 1991–2020. Each value comes from the nearest weather station that reports it, not from the city itself.

January average: −6.3 °C Kitchener/Waterloo, 13.5 km away
July average: 20.2 °C Kitchener/Waterloo, 13.5 km away
Snowfall: 114.5 cm a year Toronto Pearson (Airport), 76.9 km away (more than 50 km, so it may differ from the city)
Days below −20 °C: 6.5 days a year Kitchener/Waterloo, 13.5 km away

People

2021 Census. Figures are for the municipality of Waterloo, not the metropolitan area. Statistics Canada rounds counts, so small places are approximate.

Population: 121,436 people up 15.7% from 2016
Official languages: English only 89.6% · French only 0.0% · English and French 8.6% · neither 1.7% Share of residents who can conduct a conversation in each. This is not the language spoken at home.
Immigrants: 27.5% of residents arrived 2016–2021: 5.6% · non-permanent residents: 8.7%
Indigenous identity: 1.3% of residents
How people commute: car, truck or van 83.9% · public transit 6.5% · walking or cycling 6.9% · other 2.7% Average commute: 20.8 minutes. Shares are of people who commute.The way Canadians commute was altered in 2021 by the pandemic, with lockdowns to slow the spread of COVID-19 and changes in how and where Canadians worked leading to 2.8 million fewer commuters, compared with five years earlier. Statistics Canada, The Daily, 30 Nov 2022(opens in a new tab)
Median household income: $94,000 before tax $82,000 after tax · income year 2020, in 2020 dollars

Rural and remote

This describes the place named by the program’s location label. Programs can train in several towns, so it is not every site.

Population centre: Kitchener, a large urban population centre (100,000 or more people) 522,888 people in 2021
Remoteness index: 0.083 0 is least remote, 1 is most remote. Statistics Canada calls this index experimental.

Housing, cost and work

Each figure names the area it covers. A missing line means the source publishes nothing for this area.

Rental vacancy rate: 4.0% October 2025 survey, Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo, Ontario (census metropolitan area). The share of purpose-built rentals (three units and over) vacant, not a rent.
Basic cost of living: $55,434 a year Market Basket Measure 2025, Ontario, population 500,000 and over, for two adults with two children. A modest, basic basket (the poverty line), not a resident’s budget. A size-class region is not the town itself.
Unemployment rate: 7.7% September 2026, three-month average, seasonally adjusted, Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo, Ontario (census metropolitan area); standard error 0.8 points. A survey estimate.

Job outlook

Employment and Social Development Canada’s rating for the occupation in the economic region. It is not a count of jobs, and says nothing about CaRMS positions or your match.

Outlook, 2025–2027: Good The employment outlook will be Good for specialists in clinical and laboratory medicine (NOC 31100) in the Kitchener - Waterloo - Barrie region for the 2025-2027 period.
Canada-wide, to 2033: Strong risk of Shortage ESDC’s projection for specialists in clinical and laboratory medicine, 2024–2033. Recent conditions, 2021–2023: Strong signs of Shortage.

Sources and licences

Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence - Canada. Adapted from Statistics Canada, 2021 Census Cartographic Boundary Files.
Adapted from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Rental Market Survey, October 2025 (vacancy rates), and Statistics Canada, Table 34-10-0130-01. This does not constitute an endorsement by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation or Statistics Canada of this product.
Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence - Canada (Employment and Social Development Canada, Canadian Occupational Projection System (COPS), 2024 to 2033 projections).
Data Source: Environment and Climate Change Canada (Canadian Climate Normals 1991-2020).
Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence - Canada (Employment and Social Development Canada, 3-Year Employment Outlooks).
Adapted from Statistics Canada, Index of Remoteness (17-26-0001), 2021. This does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada of this product.
Adapted from Statistics Canada, Table 14-10-0459-01 Labour force characteristics by census metropolitan area, three-month moving average, seasonally adjusted, reference month 2026-09. This does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada of this product.
Adapted from Statistics Canada, Table 11-10-0066-01 Market Basket Measure (MBM) thresholds for the reference family by Market Basket Measure region, component and base year, 2025. This does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada of this product.
Adapted from Statistics Canada, Table 98-10-0011-01 Population and dwelling counts: Canada and population centres, 2021 Census. This does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada of this product.
Adapted from Statistics Canada, Table 98-10-0002-01 Population and dwelling counts: Canada and census subdivisions (municipalities), 2021 Census. This does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada of this product.
Adapted from Statistics Canada, Table 98-10-0057-01 Household income statistics by household type: Canada, provinces and territories, census divisions and census subdivisions, 2021 Census. This does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada of this product.
Adapted from Statistics Canada, Table 98-10-0173-01 Mother tongue by knowledge of official languages: Canada, provinces and territories, census divisions and census subdivisions, 2021 Census. This does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada of this product.
Adapted from Statistics Canada, Table 98-10-0266-01 Indigenous identity by Registered or Treaty Indian status: Canada, provinces and territories, census divisions and census subdivisions, 2021 Census. This does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada of this product.
Adapted from Statistics Canada, Table 98-10-0307-01 Immigrant status and period of immigration by place of birth: Canada, provinces and territories, census divisions and census subdivisions, 2021 Census. This does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada of this product.
Adapted from Statistics Canada, Table 98-10-0458-01 Main mode of commuting by commuting duration, time leaving for work, age and gender: Canada, provinces and territories, census divisions and census subdivisions, 2021 Census. This does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada of this product.

Independent. Not affiliated with CaRMS or the program. Programs edit their descriptions during the match; confirm on carms.ca (opens in a new tab) before you apply. Data last updated on CdnMD 6 Oct 2026.