{"id":321257,"date":"2025-12-02T20:58:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T20:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/321257\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T20:58:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T20:58:10","slug":"ontario-forced-to-slow-new-medical-school-plans-after-ignoring-warnings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/321257\/","title":{"rendered":"Ontario forced to slow new medical school plans after ignoring warnings"},"content":{"rendered":"

A lack of planning in the Ford government\u2019s expansion of Ontario\u2019s medical schools<\/a> forced the province to enroll dramatically fewer students than it had planned, the auditor general has found.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

As part of its plans to improve access to primary care, the government announced the number of places available at Ontario\u2019s medical schools would be substantially increased.<\/p>\n

Part of the plan included the creation of two new medical schools at Toronto Metropolitan University and York University.<\/p>\n

The rush to fulfil the promise of new medical schools, however, appears to have left the government ignoring warnings from the sector that there were not enough training opportunities to accommodate new students.<\/p>\n

Auditor General Shelley Spence found the government did not consider expanding existing schools instead of building new ones, and did not \u201cdocument an analysis of key considerations to support their expansion decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

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In particular, the government failed to listen to warnings from leaders at its medical schools that there is \u201ccurrently a limit on the amount of family medicine training that can occur, with current sites and preceptors already at full capacity.\u201d<\/p>\n

That warning came in November 2023, the auditor general found, but the government pressed ahead with its plan.<\/p>\n

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As the government moved forward, it found the warning had been true and was forced to scale back its plan. By the end of the current academic year, medical schools will have rolled out 44 per cent fewer family medicine seats than they had originally planned as a direct result of the blockade.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe majority of the family medicine seat expansion is expected to be rolled out starting in the 2026\/27 academic year,\u201d the auditor general concluded.<\/p>\n

Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Health Anthony Leardi couldn\u2019t say on Tuesday why the ministry had not taken into account the need to have training options for medical graduates, forcing it to slow down its expansion plans.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe set ourselves a goal, it\u2019s a very high goal, we\u2019re going to try to meet that goal,\u201d he told reporters. \u201cWe\u2019re heading towards that goal, we\u2019ve already increased the number of doctors being trained and graduated in the province of Ontario.\u201d<\/p>\n

The auditor general found a lack of analysis from the government for its medical school expansion plan meant the level of funding required to create more training sites was not properly assessed.<\/p>\n

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That\u2019s important because postgraduate family medicine students generally require two years of training at a site which supports residencies for students.<\/p>\n

An internal memo referenced by the auditor general noted \u201cmedical schools have been clear that without infrastructure investments [in new family physician training sites], the ability to continue to expand family medicine positions will be constrained after 2025.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a result, by the end of the current year, medical schools will have rolled out 115 new family medicine seats, 89 (or 44 per cent) fewer than the number they had planned.<\/p>\n

\u201cMedical schools identified the lack of sufficient family physician training sites, such as PCTCs, as the primary reason for rolling out fewer seats than planned,\u201d the auditor general wrote.<\/p>\n

Despite the report\u2019s findings, Leardi suggested more seats could have been added.<\/p>\n

\u201cCould we graduate more? Yes, we\u2019d be happy to,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that when you\u2019re actually increasing the number of doctors being trained and educated in Ontario, that indicates a very successful plan.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The report also found Ontario had not specifically set up any performance indicators to show whether its increase in medical seats was actually helping connect more people to the health-care system.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A lack of planning in the Ford government\u2019s expansion of Ontario\u2019s medical schools forced the province to enroll…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":321258,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13403,43,43791,44,94442,13404,714,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-321257","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-ford-government","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-medical-school","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-ontario-health-care","13":"tag-ontario-politics","14":"tag-politics","15":"tag-top-news","16":"tag-top-stories","17":"tag-topnews","18":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}