Ottawa has introduced a series of new immigration measures to speed up the approval and recruitment process for internationally trained doctors in an effort to ease pressure on the health care system.

“We are seeing the pressure in emergency departments, families are reporting long waits for health care services, and staff are under tremendous pressure,” Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister Lena Metlegh Diab said in a press conference.

“We have received a clear message: patients, provinces and the health community are saying we need more staff,” she continued.

The plan creates a new Express Entry category for internationally trained doctors who have at least one year of work experience in Canada in the past three years.

“This will provide a clear pathway to permanent residency for these doctors to fill the health care workforce gap and make access to services more sustainable,” Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said in a statement.

Foreign doctors accepted into the program will receive their work permit in a very short period of time, just 14 days. An additional 5,000 permanent residence quotas, in addition to the provincial nominee program quotas, will be allocated to provinces and territories to nominate doctors with job offers.

Improving access to health services
While the number of people without access to primary health care is still high, data shows that the situation has improved slightly in the last three years.

According to the 2025 OurCare national survey, an estimated 5.9 million Canadians do not have access to a primary health care provider, such as a family doctor, nurse practitioner or health care team.

The 2022 survey reported that this number was 6.5 million.

“These statistics confirm what doctors and patients experience every day is real,” said Margot Brunel, president of the Canadian Medical Association. “Access to primary care is still difficult for many Canadians, but we know that there is a solution and that universal access to health services is an achievable goal.”

The survey also asked people to be satisfied with how the health system is performing, with only 28 per cent saying they were satisfied or very satisfied.

At the end of the story, readers were asked to share their experiences with access to health services and their level of satisfaction with CTVNews.ca.

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