The Empire Club of Canada
Hybrid
Thursday, March 6, 2025
Canada’s primary care system is in crisis – one that has been building across the country for many years. Lack of access to family doctors and other primary care professionals leaves many Canadians with limited options for consistent longitudinal care. At the same time, the rate of family physician growth has slowed from three percent to one percent, which has further exacerbated the crisis.
Today, 6.5 million Canadian adults lack access to a primary care professional they can see when they need care. The evidence is clear that without primary care, people have worse health, rates of preventable diseases go up, and costs to the healthcare system increase. Disproportionally impacted are newcomers to Canada, lower income, people with disabilities or that belong to underserved groups such as Indigenous communities.
Across levels of government, jurisdictions have tried and tested strategies to tackle the shortage of physicians and access to primary care and many others are in flight to address innovative models of team-based care, licensing and training, as well as recruitment and retention.
With 2025 provincial and national elections pending in Canada, what should Canadians advocate for from their elected officials, how can we ensure policy and funding commitments are tied to strong patient outcomes and accountability, and how will we close existing gaps in primary care to improve the health and well-being of all Canadians?
Join us on March 6 at the Empire Club of Canada to hear from Dr. Joss Reimer, President of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) who will highlight the key challenges and options to close the gap in primary care. Dr. Reimer will sit down with Dr. Dominik Nowak, President of the Ontario Medical Association and Dr. Ojistoh Horn, President, Indigenous Physicians Association of Canada for a discussion and solutions for elected officials in jurisdictions across Canada. The session will be moderated by Kelly Grant, Health Reporter at The Globe and Mail, who will lead the discussion on key healthcare issues.
Dr. Ojistoh Horn is Kanienkeha:ka (Mohawk) is from Kahnawake where she lives with her family. Her father is from Akwesasne, where she currently works. She is a family physician taking care of her people through all stages of the lifecycle. Supervising medical students and family medicine residents during their rural rotations in Akwesasne, she emphasizes the complexities of providing primary care to Indigenous peoples and their communities. Drawing on both Western and Traditional paradigms, working with like- minded physicians across the country, with a focus on the effects of the environment and pollution on health, she promotes the inclusion and support of traditional knowledge and ‘ways of being’ into a framework for providing wholistic and primary care to her people.
Dr. Dominik Nowak is the Ontario Medical Association’s President and a family doctor at Women’s College Hospital.
Dr. Nowak trained at McMaster University, where he specialized in family medicine and served as chief resident. He went on to the University of Toronto to finish a Master of Health Administration at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation as well as the ICD-Rotman Directors Education Program at the Rotman School of Management.
Dr. Nowak is a faculty member in the Department of Family and Community Medicine and the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. He is a recipient of the College of Family Physicians of Canada Award of Excellence for his leadership in Canadian healthcare.
Dr Joss Reimer is the President of the Canadian Medical Association and former chief medical officer for the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority. Dr Reimer is an expert in public health, health equity, physician leadership, and health communication. She was the medical lead and official spokesperson for Manitoba’s COVID-19 Vaccine Implementation Taskforce and spent nine years as director of population health at the University of Manitoba. Dr. Reimer practises maternity care at the Women’s Hospital in Winnipeg and has received awards such as Humanitarian of the Year by Doctors Manitoba, Distinguished Alumni from the University of Manitoba and the Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee Medal. She completed her medical training at the University of Manitoba and McMaster University and holds a master’s in public health focused on health communication.
Kelly Grant’s career in journalism began in high school, when she worked as a night and weekend tape editor at her local television station in London, Ont. She’s been hooked on reporting ever since. After earning a Bachelor of Journalism degree from Carleton University in Ottawa, Kelly worked as a cop reporter and editorial writer at the Windsor Star and as a general assignment writer and Toronto city hall reporter at The National Post.
She joined The Globe and Mail in 2008. Kelly has held a variety of posts at The Globe, including Toronto editor and Toronto City Hall bureau chief.
She is now a national health reporter with a special interest in primary care, chronic diseases, including cancer, brain health, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity, and pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical policy. In 2022, she undertook a special assignment reporting on health care in Nunavut. When not reporting, she can usually be found at the arena, cheering on her three sons.
