Ontario wants to capitalize on Canada’s image of being more accepting of the gay community — highlighted by national legislation permitting same-sex marriages, passed this summer — as part of its overall effort to sell the merits of Ontario to the rest of the world, David Spencer, a spokesman for the provincial Ministry of Health, said on Tuesday.

George Smitherman, Ontario’s first openly gay cabinet minister and its health minister, spent the past weekend at a conference for the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, making a bid to attract its mostly American members.

The province is short nearly 2,200 physicians, leaving almost 1.2 million people without access to a family doctor, the Ontario Medical Association said earlier this month.

A number of members of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association asked Ontario officials about Canadian immigration laws and medical practice requirements following Smitherman’s opening speech at the conference on Friday, said Joel Ginsberg, executive director of the San Francisco-based association.

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