Canada doesn’t need another headline about doctors — it needs a plan

Dec. 22, 2025

“Canada’s problem is not a lack of potential physicians, but a failure of planning and foresight,” writes Dr. Debakant Jena. Dreamstime

By Debakant Jena Contributor

Dr. Debakant Jena is chief of orthopedic surgery at Medicine Hat Regional Hospital, associate professor at the University of Calgary and a first-generation immigrant to Canada.

In May, 96-year-old retired teacher Dorothy Lamont placed a small classified ad in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald titled “Seeking a Physician.” After nearly three years without a family doctor, she wrote that she was “in the 80,000s” on Nova Scotia’s wait-list.

I do not know Ms. Lamont, but I know her story. I see versions of it every week: seniors waiting half a day in emergency rooms; families delaying care; conditions becoming dangerous because nobody had the time or continuity to intervene.

Against that reality, Ottawa announced 5,000 permanent-residence spots for international doctors, along with a new application stream and promises of 14-day processing. But permanent residence is not a licence to practise medicine. A work permit is not a training pathway. None of this creates residency positions, expands assessment capacity, or increases supervised integration — steps needed to determine whether physicians can safely join a publicly funded system.

And it leaves untouched the most glaring fact: more than 13,000 internationally trained physicians already live in Canada without any pathway to practise. Before adding thousands more, we should ask why so many already here cannot even be assessed.

For years, immigration has been the quickest lever for government, even as unplanned growth strained health care, classrooms, and social supports. A new announcement cannot fix a physician shortage that population policy helped expose.

Read more at the Toronto Star

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