Headlines paint a bleak picture of the Canadian health-care system. In December alone, news outlets reported 5.9 million Canadians still don’t have access to primary care. The emergency department – if it’s open – is for many the only means of access, resulting in over-crowding, long wait times (with one-in-13 patients walking out without being treated) and, sometimes, critical incidents resulting in death. Health misinformation is an ever-present concern with dire consequences, such as Canada losing its measles elimination status.
Thus, it’s unsurprising that most Canadians say improving access to Canada’s universal health system should be a key priority in building a stronger country. In fact, seven-in-10 Canadians say that health care is in crisis, and are looking to provinces and territories to work with the federal government for solutions.
But if solutions lie in policy and politics, what about physicians? Is there a role they can play on the political field?
Elected officials from different fields all bring valuable perspectives in a democracy. Physicians are no exception and can help prioritize science and health in public policy. Historically, though, there have been clashing perspectives regarding physicians’ political participation.
In 1899, physician Charles J. Whalen bemoaned in JAMA that “the doctor is virtually a political nonentity” and called for physicians to increase their political participation and advocate for favourable legislation, such as to address pseudoscience. This sentiment is echoed in modern medical education frameworks in Canada. For example, the Medical Council of Canada’s examination objectives references the potential for advocacy to influence patient care and health policy. Similarly, the CanMEDS competency framework notes that the health advocate competency often requires engaging with other health-care professionals, agencies and policymakers.
In contrast, in 2011, a citizen wrote to the National Post, arguing that physicians “would serve Canadians far better by taking care of our health than to represent us in parliament.” Similarly, in the U.S., when the American College of Physicians released policy recommendations in 2018 to address firearm-related injuries, the National Rifle Association told physicians to “stay in their lane.”
Amid these conflicting perspectives, it’s unclear how many physicians participate in federal politics in Canada – and who these physician parliamentarians even are. This is what our new study, now published in the University of Toronto Medical Journal, set out to explore.
In our retrospective study, we identified and documented the Canadian physicians who have served as Members of Parliament (MPs) and Senators, finding that since the first Parliament in 1867, 220 of 4,695 (4.69 per cent) MPs and 64 of 1,006 (6.4 per cent) Senators were physicians.
Strikingly, we found that though there has always been a Canadian physician in Parliament, there has been a steep decline in political participation.
Though there has always been a Canadian physician in Parliament, there has been a steep decline in political participation.
In the current 45th Parliament, only seven physicians serve as MPs out of 343 (2.04 per cent). Interestingly, we found that physicians are over-represented in Parliament. That is, there are more physician MPs in the current Parliament than the number of physicians in the general Canadian population – per 2024 health workforce data, there were 99,555 physicians in Canada (i.e., 0.24 per cent, or 2.41 per 1,000 Canadians).
Our study found that most physician politicians were men (96.8 per cent), represented a riding in Ontario (38.6 per cent) or Quebec (27.7 per cent), and tended to run for office more than once (90 per cent). For the 75 physician MPs whose specialty was known, 48 (64 per cent) were surgeons.
Our findings echo what is observed in the U.S.: U.S. physicians were mostly men and were over-represented in federal legislatures.
We also found that three physicians were appointed as Canadian Ministers of Health: Henri Sévérin Béland, John Wesley Edwards and Jane Philpott. Notably, Charles Tupper is the only physician to hold the office of Prime Minister in Canada: he was the oldest (at 74 years) to take this role and had the shortest tenure (68 days).
Despite the current over-representation, the decline in physician political participation since our first Parliament is notable. Physicians have reported various challenges in political participation, including a lack of support from professional colleagues, the slow pace of change, difficulty in keeping up with medical advances, a loss of motivation and contending with an income reduction. This suggests a need to continue sustaining and supporting interest in pursuing political participation and advocacy among physicians. For example, in the U.S., 314 Action, a U.S. grassroots-based organization, launched the “Guardians of Public Health” campaign in February 2025 to elect 100 new physicians to state offices and Congress by 2030.
While our study is the first to present a complete list of Canada’s physician parliamentarians, additional studies will be necessary to better understand physician parliamentarian contributions to public policy and the challenges they face when it comes to political participation.
To be clear, the answer to strengthening Canada’s health-care system is not that every physician must run for office (though it is one part of the bigger picture).
More broadly, as Dhruv Kullar recently wrote in The New Yorker’s year-in-review series, the role of doctors is changing forever as they no longer hold a “near-monopoly” on knowledge nor the provision of medical care. One way forward is to consider reinvention: Kullar envisions that through greater engagement with the world outside of hospitals and clinics, the medical profession can continue to help people feel better, by changing how we do it.
Perhaps that is how we can best resist cynicism in the Canadian health-care system: whether it is through running for office, community participation or collective advocacy, we can each take a step, no matter how small, to help build the health-care system that we know is possible.
