Mayor Normand Riopel of Champlain Township urged his council for unanimous support of a province-wide plea for action by Premier Doug Ford and his government to prevent a future shortage of doctors in Ontario.
“We do need doctors,” said Mayor Riopel just before the end of the August 22 session of township council.
One of the last items on council’s agenda was a brief from the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) urging all of its members to join the AMO and the Ontario Medical Association (OMA) in a joint campaign to lobby Ontario’s Progressive Conservative for immediate action to prevent a serious shortage of family doctors and other health care professionals in the province in the near future. Mayor Riopel read out to council a joint letter from OMA and the AMO.
“Communities across Ontario have been facing critical healthcare challenges, including long wait lists for primary care, shortages of doctors and other health care workers, and emergency room closures,” stated the brief. “These cracks in Ontario’s health care system are impacting economic development, health, and well-being at the local level.”
The brief stated that “health care in Ontario is in crisis” with 2.3 million Ontario residents in rural and urban areas across the province who do not have a family doctor. The AMO and OMA noted that 40 per cent of Ontario’s active family doctors are looking at retirement within the next five years.
The total number of doctors in Ontario who do provide “comprehensive family medicine” has declined from 77 per cent in 2008 to 65 per cent in 2022.
The brief also noted that Ontario ranks as the lowest of all provinces in its per capita spending on health care. The AMO and OMA indicated that Ontario will face serious competition from both other provinces and from other countries to attract doctors, nurses, technicians, and other health care professionals.
The plea from the AMO and OMA comes just a few weeks after the nearby municipality of Casselman saw three doctors leave a clinic around the same time, taking jobs in other municipalities and countries, leaving more than 2,000 residents without a family physician.
Champlain Township council voted unanimous support an AMO and OMA resolution calling on the provincial government “to recognize the physician shortage” that affects the municipality and the rest of Ontario and “to fund health care appropriately and ensure every Ontarian has access to physician care.”
