All the main parties of the Ontario electoral campaign promise to ensure that everyone in the province has access to a family doctor.
For voters who care deeply about this issue, the question of which party can convert the promise in reality will probably be the most important thing when the day of the elections arrives on February 27.
So what do the parties promise?
First some connect:
Some 2.5 million inhabitants of Ontario do not have a family doctor o Regular access to any other primary care provider, such as a practicing nurse. That leaves them waiting in clinics without appointment when they get sick, or resort to the emergency rooms of the hospital if they do not have other options.
The projections suggest another Three million inhabitants will lose their family doctor for retirement In the coming years.
That is the precise situation that Louise Lee and his family have faced for two years, since their family doctor announced plans to retire.
“We had people who were looking for us online. We were continuously looking online to find places to add our name to the waiting lists,” said Lee, who is about 50 years old and lives in Navan, Ontario, half an hour by the center of the center From Ottawa.
“Anyone who mentioned going to a doctor would say:” Are they taking patients? Could you ask in our name? “He said, describing hunting as stressful.
Lee and her husband and her two adult children finally joined the office of a family doctor in December.
‘Main factor’ of medical care to cast your vote
The two -year struggle and the general state of the Medical Care System in Ontario “is an important factor in how I will choose to vote,” Lee said.
“It is very frustrating that medical care is not a more important issue in this campaign,” he said.
His frustration is shared by Dr. Dominic Nowak, president of the Medical Association of Ontario. He argues that it would be a mistake for any part minimizing the shortage of family doctors.
“If you want to form the government in this province, you must address medical care,” said Nowak in an interview.
Liberal leader Bonnie Crombie calls for family medicine his most important priority in elections.
In almost all campaign stops throughout the province, Crombie cites an estimate of how many local residents do not have a family doctor.
Liberals: 3,100 doctors, $ 3.1b
“You shouldn’t have to go to a walk in the clinic, you shouldn’t have to go to the emergency room,” Crombie said at a recent campaign event in Thunder Bay. “You must have access to primary care in your community, and we will make sure that this is the case.”
In December, the liberals became the First part to launch a detailed plan For universal access to primary care.
The promise is to spend $ 3.1 billion to recruit 3,100 additional family doctors by 2029, along with what Crombie calls “”guarantee“From a family doctor for everyone in Ontario.
The PC government waited until the day before Doug Ford activated the electoral campaign for announce your commitment In family doctors.
In its 12 days of campaign since then, Ford has not focused any of its public events on the issue of family doctors. He has only approached it when the reporters question it.
PCS: 305 primary care teams, $ 1.8b
The Plan would involve creating 305 new primary care teams, with an unspecified number of doctors, at a cost of $ 1.8 billion, providing two million access to primary care.
While that number does not reach the estimated number currently a family doctor, Ford has repeatedly talked about him how to connect each person in the province with a family doctor.
When asked about this on Friday, the PC leader responded by saying that Ontario has a higher percentage of the population associated with a family doctor than any other province.
“Is it good enough? It’s not good enough,” Ford said. “I believe in continuous improvement.” He pointed out the appointment of his government the past fall of Dr. Jane Philpott, the former Federal Liberal Health Minister, to preside over the Primary Care Access team of the province, in charge of supervising the impulse of family doctors.
The details of the plan are in a government press release, although not on the Ontario PC Party website. The promise is mentioned in the news communications of the party as a bullet point.
Marit Stiles of the NDP He presented his group’s plan For family medical care on Friday in Sault Ste. Marie, where about 10,000 people lost access to their family doctor last year when a large clinic cut patients from their list due to retirement and medical outputs.
“We are going to work tirelessly until everyone has a doctor in this city,” Stiles told the campaign event in Sault Ste. Marie. “We cannot trust that Doug Ford or the liberals fixed what they broke.”
NDP: 3,500 doctors, $ 4b
The NDP promises to spend $ 4.05 billion to recruit 3,500 new doctors in the next four years, more money and more doctors than PCs or liberals.
Like Crombie, Stiles presents promise as a “guarantee“Access to a family doctor.
The NDP plan to increase access to family medicine also includes shared provisions by the other parties, such as reducing paperwork for family doctors and obstacle cleaning so that doctors who trained and practiced abroad can be approved to practice in Ontario.
The leader of the Green Party, Mike Schreiner, said that his party is “committed to ensuring that everyone in this province has access to a family doctor, a practitioner or a primary medical care provider”, but have not yet published details.
On Wednesday, more than 1,000 people aligned in the snow in Walkerton, Ontario, to try to get a family doctor, but only the first 500 would succeed.
Only two weeks before Ford called the elections, Ontario saw surprising images of how desperate some people are to find a family doctor. More than 1,000 people Outdoor aligned in a snowy morning in January In the small town of Walkerton to try to get one of the 500 places with a doctor who launches a new practice.
Nowak, the president of OMA, compared that event with the novel and franchise of dystopic films The hunger gamesAnd he says he points out the political importance of the problem in the elections.
“What we encourage voters to do is vote based on who they trust to deliver so that our medical care system will direct it again,” he said.
While statistics certainly suggest that millions of ontarium voters are affected by the shortage of family doctors, it is far from being clear how it will influence the elections.
Federal Money Key for campaign promises
Consider this notable demographic trend in the data published by the Canadian Health Information Institute: The age group is less likely to have a family doctor in Ontario are young people aged 18 to 34.
That is also the age group that is less likely to vote.
You may wonder, since Ontario has had problems with the shortage of a family doctor for years, why all political parties can now make these promises to fix it.
In part, you can thank the federal government of Justin Trudeau.
Ottawa agreed to a great impulse in the general financing of medical care to the provinces at the end of 2022, and signed its bilateral agreement with Ontario in early 2023.
The agreement is crucial for the promises of the parties in family doctors, since it compromises Ottawa to give Ontario $ 11.4 billion additional in 10 years in specific health funds and, in turn, requires that the province increase the Proportion of inhabitants of ontarians with access to primary care.
It means that these provincial political parties are making campaign promises backed by federal government money.
The Federal-Provincial Agreement emphasizes that more family doctors work in teams along with other health suppliers, such as practical nurses, nurses, social workers and mental health suppliers.
The team model aims to have other health workers take part of the family doctor’s workload, which allows the doctor to increase the number of patients in their list.
According to data from the 2023 Ministry of Health, less than 30 percent of people in Ontario are covered by any form of primary care based on the team.
The impact of Canada’s primary care crisis feels acutely in Sault Ste. Marie Ont., Where 10,000 people will be cut from your family doctor at the end of May. Nick Purdon de CBC breaks down the elimination of the group’s health group and what it means to patients.
