Over 6 million Canadians say They are unable to contact their GP regularly. Experts say the crisis has caused untold harm, preventable deaths and illnesses, and is expected to get worse before it gets better.
In Canada’s publicly funded health care system, family physicians play a critical gatekeeping role by coordinating care and ensuring access to preventive medicine, medicines, diagnostics, and specialists.
Unlike in the United States, where some insured people can see a specialist or clinic directly, Canadians must go through their family doctor or general practitioner at a walk-in clinic if they need certain types of care.
In Canada, having a family doctor is nothing special. It’s a must have.
Dr. David Barber, a family physician and chair of the General Family Practice Division at the Ontario Medical Association (OMA), says that unless more people have easy access to primary care, the health of the population will deteriorate. said.
“I’m really concerned about this. I’m really scared when I think about the patients who don’t have access to the health care system,” Barber told CBC News.
He said the multibillion-dollar health care agreement between Ottawa and the provinces, which funds the expansion of physician training positions and the recognition of foreign physician qualifications, is a good start, but the numbers said it suggested the government needed to do more.
The number of physician training slots in Canada has remained largely stagnant over the past decade, despite population growth and millions of people living without a family doctor, according to a CBC News analysis.
The population is growing and family doctors are retiring en masse. Barber said more than 1.7 million people in Ontario have a family doctor who is 65 or older.
As a result, OMA predicts that by 2026, one in four people in the state will no longer have a “cradle-to-grave” primary care physician.
“Here’s my perspective: Is it acceptable for 25 percent of all children to be out of school because there aren’t enough teachers?” Barber said.
“There’s a lot of damage and a lot of morbidity and mortality because of this,” he added. “We’re going to see a lot more disease.”
As CBC News reported, job openings for medical residents, a key pipeline for bringing more doctors into the system, have stagnated for the past decade. The number of medical students choosing family medicine has plummeted.
The few precious spots available are sometimes given to international students from wealthy countries like Saudi Arabia who are contractually obligated to return home at the end of their stay.
Bureaucratic red tape makes it extremely difficult for Canadian-born doctors trained overseas to return home and practice.
New Canadians also have to go through onerous procedures to obtain the necessary qualifications to work in their new country. This process can take years to complete.
And many family physicians are choosing not to work in traditional clinics, instead working in hospitals or sports medicine clinics where they can work more regular hours and have a better work-life balance.
CBC News spoke to Canadians who don’t have a family doctor. They all say they’re afraid of getting sick if they don’t have a doctor to turn to or someone to help them navigate the maze of the health care system.
Canada is losing hundreds of qualified Canadian doctors who were trained overseas because a combination of red tape and prejudice makes it difficult to obtain training in Canada.
They worry about leaving their illness untreated and spending hours in the emergency room. They are worried that their sick family members will succumb.
I’ve been on the waiting list for three years.
Jane Williams lives in Victoria, British Columbia
Her doctor announced his retirement with sufficient advance notice to give the patient time to find someone else who cared about her health.
But Williams has been searching for three years and hasn’t found anyone. She said she has been shuffled from one waiting list to another since the state government merged regional lists into a state-wide directory.
All she wants, she said, is to know where she is on the waiting list. State officials have told her the information cannot be released.
Her husband Steve is scheduled to undergo surgery later this year. She said she was worried that without a GP, she wouldn’t be able to get the post-op medication and advice she needs to make a full recovery.
“What do you do when you’re in the middle of a medical crisis?” she said. “It just puts pressure on hospitals, and no one wants that.”
Williams said it would be unconscionable in a wealthy country like Canada to leave millions of people tossing around in the wind without access to a primary care provider.

“It’s difficult. We don’t know exactly what’s going to happen,” she told CBC News. “We have been on the list for about three years and nothing seems to be happening.
“This speaks to a lack of proactive planning by the government. They recognize that the population is growing with increased immigration. And I recognize that there are older generations like me who have more medical needs.
“It seems like this issue has been on the back burner for a long time, doesn’t it?”
to grow old
Bill Wishart, 65, works as a forestry technician in Cape Breton, near Sydney, where he does the manual labor of patrolling forest areas.
He considers himself healthy, with his only concern being high blood pressure, but he has had his fair share of injuries, including a damaged shoulder and a hip injury that required replacement.
Particularly over the past 10 years, Ms. Wishart has had sporadic access to her primary care physician, using four or five different providers. He said he had about 15 different family doctors throughout his life.
He said he wasn’t always satisfied with the care he was receiving. His previous primary care physician misdiagnosed his hip pain, and he was denied the replacement medication he really needed for years. But at least he had someone to turn to if something happened.
While Canadian medical students trained abroad are struggling to qualify to stay in Canada, the number of foreign nationals, or “visa trainees,” who qualify has increased by 70 per cent, increasing support. They say this trend needs to end.
She lost her doctor last November when she moved to Ontario to be closer to family.
He is on the prefecture’s waiting list. He also hopes his wife’s doctor will accept him as a patient before he develops an illness that requires regular care and attention.
“Once your baby gets a little older, you’ll want to get regular check-ups if possible, right?” Wishart said.
“I know things are going to start to fall apart. It’s hard when you don’t have a family doctor or someone to look after your health. You just don’t have someone to talk to consistently. It’s disappointing.” Me too. You’re going to lose something. ”

Wishart said some of the blame lies with the federal and state governments.
He said Ottawa, in particular, isn’t doing enough to help provinces recruit and retain family physicians.
Wishart pointed to the millions of dollars that were allegedly wasted on the pandemic-era ArriveCan app, saying that for small regions like his that are permanently short on medical resources, it’s a waste of money. said it could change the situation completely.
“ArriveCan’s money is just gone. If you were to spend $56 million, you could put it in a place like Truro or Amherst and it would help a little bit,” he said of the price tag. Regarding app development failures.
“When you think about the amount of money we spend on health care, I’m just appalled that there isn’t a better system or a better way. I don’t work in health care, so I don’t have an answer.” It’s surprising that we don’t put more emphasis on family doctors. ”
defender
Marilyn Gifford lives in Sarnia, Ontario. Although she has a family doctor, she says she saw many other local residents without a family doctor and “she got sick”.
She said more family doctors are desperately needed in her region of Ontario. One in three people living there may not have a primary care physician in five years, a rate much higher than the state average, according to state data.
She launched a grassroots campaign to secure more doctor training slots for local students to train abroad in countries such as Australia and the UK. Physicians must pass training before being licensed to practice.
Carrying a petition clipboard and an apron that says, “This Grandma Needs 1,000 Funds.” [signatures]”She has personally met with about 2,900 people in her area so far. She said the reception of the petition has far exceeded her expectations.”
“The stories are terrible,” Gifford said of her interactions with local residents.
“There is no primary care available to the average person. My apron here has heard so many stories, many of them so heartbreaking.”

Every year, the country’s medical schools, the institutions that manage residency programs, turn away hundreds of potential trainees who have studied abroad, denying them jobs while giving privileges to graduates of their own medical schools. There is.
She said she won’t rest until more slots become available so she can graduate more doctors who can serve in communities like hers.
“We’re in a crisis here. We’re so far behind that we can’t catch up even if we keep doing what we’ve been doing,” she said.
“There is a simple and workable solution to this: simply increase the number of settlements. Stop the bureaucracy.”