Doctors per 10,000 Population (2006 Census)

It's no medical secret--Canada suffers from a shortage of doctors. But while the shortage is an issue of national concern, the pain is not felt evenly across the country.

Canadian Medical Association president Jeff Turnbull notes that while we "lag behind other developed countries" in terms of our physician-to-resident ratio, there is a "serious lack" of physicians in many of the country's rural areas. Dr. Turnbull points to the Northwest Territories and Nunavut as examples of regions where the problem is especially critical. The map and table confirm that finding--apart from in Yukon, the doctor shortage is far worse in Canada's vast North than it is in the South.

Access to the few doctors who do live in Northern regions is another problem. To reach a doctor, many Northerners must be transported hundreds--or even thousands--of kilometres. The cost of the physician shortage in Canada's North is great, both in terms of dollars spent on transportation and in the risks to human health and security.

Source: The Conference Board of Canada.

Methodology

Data for total population, "D011--Specialist physicians" and "D012--General practitioners and family physicians" were exported from a 2006 census custom tabulation of occupations purchased from Statistics Canada (catalogue number 97C0001) using Beyond 20/20 Professional Browser. These data were imported into Microsoft Excel, where the two categories of physicians were summed for every census division in Canada. Individual census division values were then summed into the 10 Northern and 10 Southern regions defined by the Centre for the North. The ratio of physicians per regional population was calculated and then multiplied by 10,000. These regional values were then imported into a geographic information system (ArcGIS) where the data were categorized (<20, 20-29, 30+), mapped, and labelled. A ranked table of the total number of physicians by region was then prepared.

The quotes from Dr. Jeff Turnbull, president of the Canadian Medical Association, were taken from an article by Amy Minsky entitled "More Physicians in Canada Than Ever, but Shortage Still Evident: Study," which was published in the Ottawa Citizen on December 3, 2010.

A number of factors should be taken into consideration when comparing the figures on the map and in the table with those found in other studies.

• The total number of physicians is defined here as including specialist physicians. Some other studies do not include this group of doctors, so the total numbers presented in those studies are typically lower than the numbers here.
• A Statistics Canada report on health-care professionals¹ notes that "[t]hese professionals are not necessarily active in the labour force."
• The same report warns that 3,350 doctors enumerated in the census actually work outside Canada.
• Finally, the report states that "Because of the small number of inhabitants in Nunavut, and of the effect of random rounding, the ratio tends to vary greatly, and in some cases to even double."

About the Series

Here, the North is a bi-weekly series researched, written, and produced by The Conference Board of Canada's Centre for the North. The series is designed to illustrate similarities and differences-between Canada's North and South, and between Northern regions--in keeping with the Centre's mandate to provide policy--directed research to decision makers.

This issue of Here, the North was researched and written by Peter Wilson.

1  Statistics Canada, Health-Care Professionals and Official-Language Minorities in Canada (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 2009) www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/91-550-x/2008001/part-partie1-eng.htm, 8.