Dr. Adil Shamji
MPP, Don Valley East
Dr. Adil Shamji is an emergency physician who has devoted his career to helping people. After graduating from Western University and medical school at the University of Toronto, he worked in Indigenous communities across Canada and joined the emergency department at Michael Garron Hospital in Toronto’s east end. Dr. Shamji pursued a Master’s degree in Public Policy at the University of Oxford and returned to Canada to converge medical practice with public policy. He was appointed the Medical Director for 11 homeless shelters in Toronto as part of the City’s pandemic response efforts. Besides clinical work, he is also a lecturer in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto.
Dr. Shamji was at the frontlines during the COVID-19 pandemic and opioid crisis, setting up primary care clinics that provided healthcare and addiction services to the city’s most vulnerable. Having experienced firsthand the pressures of the pandemic that revealed the inequalities within our healthcare system, Dr. Shamji has taken his advocacy to the Ontario Legislature as an elected Member of Provincial Parliament for Don Valley East.
He is appointed to the Standing Committee on Social Policy and is the Ontario Liberal Caucus critic for Health, Northern Development, Indigenous Affairs, and Colleges & Universities. As an MPP, Dr. Shamji has advocated for government accountability and transparency by introducing a Private Member’s Bill that would require Ministers and their Parliamentary Assistants to release their mandate letters from the Premier. He has also been outspoken on emergency department closures, and has proven a staunch advocate of universal, publicly funded healthcare. He is frequently asked by media to comment on the most pressing healthcare issues of the day.
Dr. Shamji is committed to making government work in the best interests of everyone across Ontario, and believes that ‘all policy is health policy’.