Ontario Liberal Party pledges $3.1B in effort to ‘guarantee’ family doctor for all within 4 years

The Ontario Liberal Party is rolling out a “central pillar” of its future election campaign that’s focused on health care, and it includes $3.1 billion to recruit 3,100 family doctors by 2029.

Bonnie Crombie outlined the Ontario Liberal Party’s policy in Brampton Monday morning.

In a statement, it was dubbed as a “comprehensive plan to guarantee every person in Ontario has a family doctor close to home” by the end of a first term should the party form government.

“Fixing family medicine will be the single most important priority of an Ontario Liberal government,” the statement said.

Party officials said the health care plan would focus on:

• Educating, attracting and retaining 3,100 domestically and internationally trained family doctors
• Improve the Ontario Health Team network to expand access to doctors
• Modernize family medicine by pushing to end the use of fax machines in favour of electronic systems, expand appointments to evenings and weekends
• “Stop penalizing” patients, doctors if care is sought at walk-in clinics

As part of the push to bring on 3,100 family doctors, the party committed to doubling the number of medical school and residency spots by creating two new medical schools while expanding capacity at existing institutions.

It also said the party would “accelerate the process to integrate at least 1,200 qualified and experienced internationally trained doctors” over a four-year period.

There was also a mention of incentives to get doctors to serve in rural and northern Ontario communities, but specifics on those incentives weren’t included.

Ontario residents are set to go to the polls on June 4, 2026, but there has been increasing speculation of an early election call by Premier Doug Ford.

The Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario currently has 79 out of 124 seats in the Ontario legislature while the Ontario NDP has 28, the Liberals have nine and the Green Party of Ontario has two.