Health Committee on Oct. 23rd, 2025

[Dr. Christopher Watling]

I think we have a lot of evidence that Canadians lack family doctors quite significantly. You'll hear more from colleagues at The College of Family Physicians of Canada in the next hour, I think.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

These individuals will have to go to emergency rooms to see doctors because they won't have access to a family doctor. Is that probably fair to say?

[Dr. Christopher Watling]

Well, I think maybe that diminishes efforts that are going on across the country to try to improve access to family physicians and to specialist physicians. There is certainly hope that the situation is improving as a result of some of the work that is already under way.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

Dr. Watling, earlier this month, the Minister of Health stated, “Right now, there's no alignment on immigration and the need for doctors”. Do you agree that there is a disconnect between immigration policy and health care capacity?

[Dr. Christopher Watling]

I am not sure that I have the expertise to speak about immigration policy. I think there are a lot of things driving that, which are not exclusively related to health care.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

We just talked about Canadians not having family doctors—6.5 million Canadians don't have a family doctor right now. There are lineups in emergency rooms, and we just heard that 395,000 permanent residents and 673,000 immigrants—almost a million more people—are coming into the system. You have not been consulted. Do you think there's a disconnect?

[Dr. Christopher Watling]

I think it would be nice to see a stronger link between these things, yes.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

The Globe and Mail reported this month:

On Tuesday, when Health Minister Marjorie Michel was asked if she would introduce something similar to Bill C-5, which removed barriers for interprovincial labour movement but not for physicians and other health professionals, she said yes.

Is this type of legislation something the college would support?

[Dr. Christopher Watling]

Sorry, the legislation that you're talking about is to improve interprovincial movement of physicians. Is that right?

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

Yes.

[Dr. Christopher Watling]

Yes, we're very supportive of that and I think it links to that issue around pan-Canadian licensure.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

I thought it was important too but the Globe and Mail article went on to say:

However, on Wednesday, Ms. Michel’s director of communications, Guillaume Bertrand, clarified that Ms. Michel misunderstood the question and that the government won’t be tabling legislation on the issue.

Does that concern you?

[Dr. Christopher Watling]

I had felt similarly optimistic when I saw the initial comments so it disappoints me.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

How many internationally trained physicians are currently in Canada but not working as doctors?

[Dr. Christopher Watling]

I don't think anybody knows, to be exact. We've guessed at around 13,000.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

You don't think anybody knows? You've never seen any numbers, any reports?

[Dr. Christopher Watling]

I think it is just difficult information to come by and we've seen numbers but they vary quite widely, so 13,000 is a reasonable number but it's hard to know if it's accurate.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

Matt, did you want to get in here?

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Sure, I'll start with some questions for Dr. Fuda.

Thank you for being here.

I think we all agree that Canada is currently short on anesthesiologists. I was wondering if your society has hard numbers on that. How many anesthesiologists are we short?

[Dr. Giuseppe Fuda]

That's a good question. It varies very much geographically speaking. Some provinces are hit more than others. Right now the shortage is much more dire in Ontario—

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I will allow this answer and then we've run out of time.

[Dr. Giuseppe Fuda]

—but we don't have a specific number.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

We now go to Mr. Eyolfson of the Liberals.

You have six minutes.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Winnipeg West, MB]

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, all, for coming.

Dr. Fuda, thank you for your comments. My wife is an anaesthetist so I've heard her say many of the same things that you have said regarding shortages of anaesthetists and how this will often cause cases to be cancelled and care delayed.

We've talked about accelerating the training of these international graduates. We know that there's always been a difficulty in coordinating between the federal government and the provinces. What role do you see the federal government playing in that? How can we help facilitate this within the provinces?

[Dr. Giuseppe Fuda]

That's a very good question. Definitely I think that one issue is that we need the resources to be able to evaluate some of these people, so sometimes this is an issue as you actually need to pay these individuals or these professionals to be able to do proper evaluations. I'm sure Dr. Watling can attest to that.

Definitely that's one thing. In terms of immigration policies as well, like we said, one issue right now is that doctors who are in Canada presently, if they don't work within a certain time frame, are actually not eligible any more. I think that they should try to speak with each other in the provinces about pathways for these people to still become eligible despite the fact that they may not have practised for 18 or 24 months or sometimes even longer. We need to see how we can bridge that gap and have these people actually practise rather than sometimes doing jobs that are completely unrelated to their initial training.