NATIONAL PULSE – Half of Canadians don’t have GP or struggle to see one

Posted on February 6, 2026 in Feedback, National Pulse, Page One // 0 Comments

(Image: Pixabay.com)

One-in-eight say they’ve been looking for more than a year or have given up on finding a family doctor

By ANGUS REID INSTITUTE

Feb. 5, 2026 – Once a source of pride for Canadians, Canada’s health-care system has been on a 10-year slide with more Canadians than ever before having to overcome hurdles to see their family doctor, never mind specialists, diagnostics, surgeons or even emergency physicians.

New data from the non-profit Angus Reid Institute analyzes the changes in a decade worth of public opinion data that highlights these struggles. From 2015 to 2025, the percentage of Canadians who have difficult or no access to a family doctor has increased by 25 per cent (40% of Canadians in 2015, 50% in 2025).

Meanwhile, those who say it’s easy for them to get an appointment within a day or two has declined by nine points from 24 per cent in 2015 to 15 per cent currently.

The family doctor issue remains a challenging one for Canada’s provincial health-care systems to address. According to data from The Canadian Institute for Health Information, the number of family doctors per capita has risen across the country since 2015 and in every province except Alberta and Ontario. But because of an aging population with increasingly complicated medical needs, and more specialized family practices, Canadians have less access to their family doctor in general. Indeed, in every province in the country, there are more Canadians who say they don’t have a family doctor or can’t get a timely appointment with the one they had, than said so in 2015.

Other facets of the health-care system are also under strain. Among those who needed care from the system in the past six months, two-in-five (40%) say they faced difficulties booking a diagnostic test, more (46%) said it was hard to get surgery they needed, a majority (56%) faced barriers obtaining an appointment with a specialist and half (52%) found it difficult to access emergency care.

With all these evident issues with health care, seven-in-ten (70%) say the quality of the health-care system in their province has deteriorated in the past decade. Since 2015, spending on health care in Canada has nearly doubled, from $219 billion to $399 billion, including a $130-billion increase in public spending. And yet, the crisis in the health-care system has left many wondering if medical care will be there when they need it. Three-in-five (59%) say they are not confident that they will be able to get timely access to health care if they had an emergency.

More Key Findings:

Seven-in-ten (71%) say they are dissatisfied with the performance of the provincial government on health care.

The regions where Canadians report the most issues accessing family doctors are Saskatchewan (41% difficult access, 22% no family doctor), Quebec (29% difficult access, 31% no family doctor) and Atlantic Canada (39%, 21%).