Editor's note: This article originally appeared on The Trillium, a Village Media website devoted exclusively to covering provincial politics at Queen’s Park.
The Progressive Conservative government announced a plan to solve the province's doctor shortage Monday, with the premier set to trigger a provincial election campaign this week.
It comes as the opposition parties have been hammering away at the issue, accusing the Ford government of failing to ensure Ontarians have access to primary care.
On Monday, Health Minister Sylvia Jones held a news conference with the government's non-partisan advisor on the doctor shortage, former Liberal MP and cabinet minister Jane Philpott, to announce that Ontario now has a plan in place to make sure every Ontarian currently without a family doctor will have one by the time a potentially re-elected PC government ends its term in 2029.
Jones and Philpott unveiled "Ontario's Primary Care Action Plan," which promises to provide two million Ontarians with access to a family doctor over the next four years by assigning them to one of the hundreds of new "primary care teams" the province is setting up across Ontario.
"This plan is ambitious, and the changes will not happen overnight. But when our shared vision is realized, we will have a primary care system in the province that has never existed before," said Philpott, who the government hired in October to lead a team of experts to tackle the shortage.
"Every person in Ontario — every baby, every child, teenager, parent, adult seniors — will have a family doctor or nurse practitioner when they need one and can get ongoing, comprehensive and convenient care. If you move within Ontario, you will automatically be offered a primary care team in your community, ensuring continuous access to care close to home."
The plan includes many policies the PCs began implementing before they brought Philpott on board.
For years, the PCs have been rolling out primary health teams as part of the new Ontario Health Teams (OHTs) being set up around the province to provide a more integrated delivery model for health care services.
Each OHT includes an inter-professional primary care team, which can be made up of family doctors, nurse practitioners, regular nurses, social workers, dietitians and other health professionals, all under one roof. OHTs are also a critical part of the government's new delivery models for home and community care, palliative care, and rehabilitation.
The province has already opened 76 primary care teams in this model, which the province says will allow 300,000 Ontarians to start receiving primary care in the 2025-26 fiscal year.
Another 73 teams will be opened in 2026-27 and will take 500,000 patients, with 156 more teams operating during the two following fiscal years to serve 1.2 million Ontarians.
This would bring the total to two million new patients, but it's not clear if that will be enough to solve the problem.
The Ontario Medical Association (OMA) has said that 2.5 million Ontarians are currently without access to a family doctor, and that number could increase to 4.4 million by 2027. If so, then the government's plan will fall far short of its goal of ensuring universal access to primary care.
Asked about this discrepancy, Philpott and Jones seemed to suggest the OMA's numbers are incorrect.
Philpott said her team has been working "very closely with researchers and academics to determine the exact number of people who don't have access to a family doctor" while Jones said she "trusts" the figures provided by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI).
"There are a number of organizations that have been attempting to figure out the actual number of unattached patients," Jones acknowledged.
"According to CIHI data, we have 10 per cent of Ontario residents who are still looking for a primary care provider. Dr. Phillpott and her team have put together a plan to make sure that we get there."
Other parts of that plan include a promise to clear everyone currently on the waitlist for a family doctor via the province's Health Care Connect service by 2026. Going forward, Health Care Connect will be "modernized" to improve the user experience and ensure no one waits longer than 12 months before being assigned a doctor.
New standards and performance indicators will also be established for accessing primary care services, although there is no detail about what these standards will be or how they will be enforced. "Digital tools" will also be created to make it easier for patients to navigate the healthcare system and get referrals, although there are no details on how these will work either.
The province will also continue pushing ahead on its previously announced measures to recruit and retain doctors and other health-care workers, as well as ease the amount of paperwork by allowing the use of artificial intelligence note-taking programs.
Jones said the province will spend $1.8 billion to implement the plan.
Critics were quick to call the announcement a pre-election ploy, with the Ontario Health Coalition's Ross Sutherland saying it "smacks of political manipulation."
"Waiting until the cusp of an election to announce funding and a vague promise to deal with primary care is reprehensible,” said Sutherland.
The health minister denied the plan and its associated funding are effectively a PC election campaign promise, even though there will be no provincial budget to authorize the spending until after the election is over.
"That investment has already been approved and will go forward. That work starts today," insisted Jones.
Reporters pressed Philpott on whether she had allowed herself to be used by the PCs for political purposes.
"It is a tremendous honour for me to be asked to lead this team, to be able to have the resources of the Ministry of Health and Ontario Health, to be able to deliver on the plan," said Philpott.
The opposition Liberals have made the doctor shortage their key priority for the election campaign.
"Doug Ford has no shame. While Ontarians are waiting in the cold like the people of Walkerton did over a week ago, Doug Ford has failed to prioritize your health care so you can get it when you need it," Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie said at a press conference Monday. She called the announcement of the primary care plan "too little, too late."
"It's great that they hired Jane Philpott, and I hope they follow her recommendations. But don't you think they've had seven years to act — seven years that have been squandered?" she added. "Where's the progress been before now?"