Dr. Alika Lafontaine, an anesthesiologist in Grande Prairie, Alta., and the group’s first Indigenous president, told CBC News that Canada’s health care is in “dire” shape, with severely limited quality care in some parts of the country. He pointed to recent emergency room closings in Ottawa, southwestern Ontario, Quebec and other locations, and staggering ER wait times in major cities like Toronto and Montreal as dire precedents that undermine Canada’s longstanding promise of timely access to care for everyone who needs it. “We’ve been saying for a while that we’re worried about the collapse. And in some places, the collapse has already happened,” Lafontaine said. Dr. Alika Lafontaine, the new president of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA), was born and raised in Treaty 4 Territory in Saskatchewan. (Submitted by the Canadian Medical Association) “All of these things are not normal things for Canadians to experience, so we’re at a critical point right now. If you can’t access services, that’s literally a meltdown.” Frontline doctors are at a breaking point and have been for the better part of two and a half years, he said. “We’re all trained to deal with acrimony. We’re all trained to deal with critical situations. But what’s happening now is far beyond anything we’ve experienced in the past,” Lafontaine said. Lafontaine’s comments came after the CMA published a new report on Thursday, warning that all provincial and territorial systems face similar problems – especially staffing. The problem is essentially manpower, he said, and there aren’t enough doctors and nurses available to staff existing facilities, let alone serve a growing population. One of Lafontaine’s proposed solutions is to introduce what he calls “nationwide licensing,” which would allow doctors to work across the country with fewer regulatory burdens. This kind of portability would give doctors more flexibility to practice where they are most needed. It could also make it easier for foreign-trained doctors to move into the country. He said the current system — in which each province has its own licensing system — is a barrier.
A nationwide “manpower plan” for health care
A national medical license could provide a single, streamlined process for verifying the credentials of internationally trained doctors, he said. “We have to rethink the idea that we can continue with 13 separate health systems that don’t work together at a really deep level,” he said. He said the federal government should convene a meeting with provincial and territorial governments to develop some sort of “health workforce plan” to address staffing gaps and other pressing issues. In addition to playing some sort of coordinating role, Lafontaine said, Ottawa should also pump more money into the system. “We definitely need more resources in the system to move forward. But what matters is where those resources go,” he said, adding that previous federal efforts to earmark money specifically for mental health or home care for seniors have been successful. Federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos suggested more money would flow into provincial coffers in the coming months – but said it would not be a blank cheque. Duclos has already laid out Ottawa’s top five priorities for new health care spending: ending service delays, increasing the number of health care workers, improving access to primary care, a better long-term care system and home care for the seniors, more resources for mental health and substance abuse, and a new push to digitize health data and facilitate more virtual care. The issue of cumbersome licensing for doctors trained outside the country has come into focus recently in several provinces. Last month, Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones asked the province’s regulatory colleges to develop plans to faster register internationally educated doctors and nurses. Other provinces, including Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador, are working to streamline their processes as they welcome Ukrainian doctors fleeing the war into their country.
