Abstract

Are there enough doctors in Canada, is there a shortage, or more than enough? The answer to this question, as was observed 10 years ago (Barer and Stoddart 1991), is social and political and can no more be answered definitively now than then. So the answer is "it depends." It depends on how many doctors are practising, how much service they provide, how efficient these services are (which depends to some extent on how they are organized) and the demand for these services.