A family doctor is the front door to Canadian healthcare. Without one, people wait at walk-in clinics, show up in emergency rooms with problems that could have been caught early, and lose the continuity that keeps chronic illness under control.
There is no single official count of Canadians without a family doctor. There are three good estimates, each asking a slightly different question.
Canadians without a regular primary-care provider
Millions of people, by survey. Definitions differ, so read these as a range rather than a trend.
The 2025 OurCare survey found modest improvement since 2022, driven by provinces adding nurse practitioners and team-based clinics. But the gaps are deep in places: 30.9% of people in Atlantic Canada report no family doctor or nurse practitioner, and so do about 35% of adults aged 18 to 29. Only 37% of people who do have a provider can be seen the same or next day for an urgent issue.
The other half of efficiency: waiting
Access is one measure. Speed is the other. The Fraser Institute surveys specialists every year about the median wait from a GP’s referral to treatment. In 1993 it was 9.3 weeks. In 2025 it was 28.6 weeks, the second-longest on record.
Median wait from GP referral to treatment
Weeks. 1993 shown for comparison with the most recent seven years.
Province matters enormously. Ontario’s 2025 median was 19.2 weeks. New Brunswick’s was 60.9.
Every new resident needs a family doctor. A country that adds a million people a year needs about 1,200 new family physicians a year just to hold today’s ratio of 119 per 100,000.
What this means for immigration
Immigration can make this better or worse. Canada already admits thousands of internationally trained doctors and nurses, then leaves many of them working outside their field for years while they wait for a licence. Meanwhile, population growth outpaced the supply of family physicians.
- Prioritize physicians, nurses and nurse practitioners in economic selection, with licensing assessments started before arrival.
- Create a national licence so a doctor approved in one province can practise in all of them.
- Include primary-care attachment rates, by province, in the capacity index that sets immigration levels.
How this is measured
OurCare is a large online survey of adults led by St. Michael’s Hospital (Unity Health Toronto) with the Canadian Medical Association, last run April to July 2025. It counts people without reliable access to a family doctor, nurse practitioner or primary-care team.
Statistics Canada’s Canadian Community Health Survey asks whether people have a regular healthcare provider. In 2023, 83% of adults did. Counting only family doctors or nurse practitioners, the share was 71.3%.
CIHI counts licensed physicians from provincial registries. The Fraser Institute surveys specialists on wait times; response rates are low and figures are medians, so treat year-to-year moves of a week or two with caution.