Auditor General’s report underlines the need to advance government pledges in Ontario

2025-12-05

The Auditor General of Ontario’s 2025 annual report reinforces the College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC)’s long-standing calls for action to grow and sustain the family medicine workforce. It is especially important to ensure proper support for family doctor training infrastructure when millions of Ontarians don’t have a family doctor.

It is important to acknowledge the significant funding that Ontario has contributed to expansion of training, including upcoming new medical schools at Toronto Metropolitan University and York University, with a particular emphasis on family medicine.

However, the Auditor General found that family medicine residency expansion is falling short because Ontario has not funded or developed enough clinical teaching sites. Medical schools warned the government that existing sites were already at full capacity and additional seats could not be accommodated. While the government’s $300M commitment to expand teaching units is welcome, speedy implementation of this funding into practice is crucial to ensure the training capacity keeps pace with growing demand. As a national leader in family medicine education, the CFPC stresses the need to act on these commitments with urgency.

Family physicians responsible for training residents are also managing high patient volumes, administrative responsibilities, and complex care. These pressures reduce capacity to supervise learners and contribute to burnout. Chronic, decades-long underfunding and fragmentation has eroded family medicine and left dangerous gaps in the care. The current funding commitments from Ontario, focused on improving access to primary care, are welcome and must reach the front-line family practices quickly to ensure much needed relief.

We also echo the Auditor General’s call for the province to develop a clear framework to track whether its investments are improving access to family physicians or contributing to meaningful growth of the family medicine workforce.

As the Ontario government addresses the issues raised in the Auditor General’s report, family physicians are keen to support the changes needed to ensure Ontarians can access timely care.