March 26, 2026  ·  Arthur, Ontario

Just under six million Canadians do not have a family doctor.¹ Not in a specific region nor demographic. There are six million people in a G7 country that cannot obtain a routine physical checkup, a referral, or a prescription renewed without going to a walk-in clinic or an emergency room.

Canada has, approximately, 22,823-family physician shortfall.² You do not need an economics degree to understand math. At the current rates, that gap is going to keep widening — twenty percent of Canada’s existing family doctors are expected to retire within five years, according to a 2022 study.³

How This Happened

In the early 1990s, a government-commissioned report called Barer-Stoddart looked at Canada’s physician supply and concluded there were too many doctors. It recommended cutting medical school enrollment and restricting the recruitment of international medical graduates (IMGs). Both Ottawa and the provinces followed its advice.⁴

They were wrong. Despite an eventual increase of over 60% in medical school enrollment, the perception of shortage has persisted to this day. A generation of world-be Canadian doctors either never trained or went south of the border to the United States, where salaries are higher and bureaucracy is lighter. Despite eventually increasing enrollment by over 60%,⁵ the system never recovered what it deliberately cut. The shortage today is a direct policy inheritance — and nobody in Ottawa has had the honesty to say that plainly.

The Pipeline Is Still Broken

At its worst, it was estimated that the equivalent of two full graduating classes of Canadian medical schools were leaving for the United States every single year.⁶ At the peak of the exodus, physician departures outnumbered arrivals into Canada by a ratio of 19 to 1.⁷ The government had simultaneously cut the number of doctors being trained and created conditions hostile enough that the ones who finished training left anyway.

The Canadian Medical Association confirmed the original exodus came directly from government signals — through cuts to medical school enrollment and reduced opportunities.⁸

The drain has since slowed. Though, that is not a Liberal success story. That is the floor. About 20% of Canadians live in rural areas, while less than 10% of physicians practice there.⁹

Canada's family physician shortfall today sits at 23,000 — a 49% increase from current supply.¹⁰

_{The Canadian Loyalist is an independent, conservative publication. This article is based on public recordings, the NIH, Statistics Canada, news and media sources alongside official government statements. All facts are drawn from publicly available sources.}

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