Part 1 of 2: Understanding the Problem 

Canada’s healthcare system is running on fumes. Emergency rooms are closing in rural Saskatchewan. In Ontario, 2.5 million people (15% of the population) don’t have a family doctor. A newly opened family care centre in Newfoundland doesn’t have physicians to serve the town’s 4,000 residents. 

These cases aren’t outliers. They’re symptoms of a systemic problem that’s left millions with limited access to even the most basic care.

With IEHPs sidelined, the numbers are clear: there aren’t enough working healthcare professionals to care for Canada’s population. According to the federal government’s recent report, Canada’s labour market is short nearly 23,000 family doctors. Filling this gap would require a 49% increase from the current number of family physicians. And the challenge extends beyond doctors. Canada needs 28,000 more registered nurses, 14,000 more licensed practical nurses, 2,700 more nurse practitioners, and thousands more health professionals such as occupational therapists, physiotherapists, and pharmacists. 

Canada is facing an acute shortage of nurses, one of the most critical pieces of the healthcare system. Statistics Canada reported 42,045 nursing vacancies in the second quarter of 2024, a staggering 147% increase over five years. This shortage creates a vicious cycle: understaffing causes burnout among existing nurses, driving more to leave the profession, creating even greater shortages. In 2023, 40% of nurses were planning to leave their jobs or the field entirely. Inadequate nursing levels have consequences for the entire healthcare system. High nursing turnover rates reduce patient quality outcomes, especially in ICUs, and increased nursing burnout is associated with lower patient safety and satisfaction. 

Canada has just 2.8 practicing physicians per 1,000 population, well below the OECD average of 3.7 per 1,000. Average wait times for specialist appointments in Canada are dramatically higher than other OECD countries: in 2016, 61% of people in Canada waited more than a month for a specialist appointment, compared to just 25% in Germany and 27% in the United States.

Longer wait times don’t just mean delayed treatments; in some cases, patients can’t access care at all. From April 1, 2023 to March 31, 2024, an estimated 28,000 patients died in Canada while waiting for surgery or a diagnostic scan. While most health authorities in Canada do not track how many of these patients died as a result of delayed treatment, even those waiting for non-life saving surgeries may have experienced reduced quality of life before their death. 

Several converging factors have created the current healthcare crisis in Canada. The population aged 85+ is expected to increase from 911,900 people in 2024 to up to 4.1 million in the next 30 years. This group requires more complex medical care and health services just as many experienced healthcare workers are retiring. At the same time, fewer new medical graduates are going into family medicine, instead choosing specialized fields that can offer higher pay and better work-life balance. But family doctors are critical; these primary care providers decrease hospitalizations, reduce mortality, and reduce overall healthcare costs. 

Critically, Canada has been underproducing medical graduates for decades. Limited teaching faculty, a lack of clinical placements, and inadequate funding for training programs make it impossible to educate all the healthcare professionals that Canada urgently needs. 

At the same time, we welcome tens of thousands of doctors, nurses, and healthcare professionals to Canada each year. Since healthcare-specific immigration selection was introduced in the summer of 2023 more than 23,000 invitations to apply for permanent residency have been issued to healthcare professionals through the Express Entry system, with provinces also inviting healthcare workers. Yet despite the urgent need for their skills, a study of the 2021 Canadian census found that just 57.7% of IEHPs aged 18 to 64 were employed in health occupations. 

As communities across Canada grapple with emergency room closures, unfilled positions, and growing wait times for care, the country can’t afford to keep healthcare workers sidelined. IEHPs have typically completed rigorous training in their home countries, often arriving with years of practical experience. In many cases, they have also invested additional time and money to pursue licensing in Canada, only to find that they are not able to complete the process due to systemic obstacles, such as unclear processes and financial barriers. 

The Institute for Canadian Citizenship (ICC) works to make immigration work better for Canada and Canada work better for immigrants. We recognize that new Canadians are Canada’s future; a vital resource with important skills and talents to contribute. IEHPs choose to build their lives here, learning new systems and adapting to Canada’s healthcare environment. Canada desperately needs their skills and talents to provide everything from day-to-day primary care to urgent, life-saving surgeries. Still, too many of these professionals are working below their qualifications, their expertise underutilized while the very healthcare system they came to serve faces critical shortages. 

The question isn’t just whether Canada has enough healthcare workers—it’s whether we’re making it possible for them to practice for the betterment of all those who call Canada home. 

Key words: healthcare, immigration, Canadian labour force, healthcare wait times, Canada’s healthcare crisis, immigrant labour force