The cost? The cost in increased congestion when cycling is made less safe? The cost in pollution? In human lives from increased road deaths? How about those costs, Doug? The costs that matter most?

Not at all. What I would suggest is improving pay—but even more than that, working conditions—until family medicine work is not such a shitty proposition that medical students don’t even want to go through the residency process to train for it.

Why would you want to beat down someone else instead of demanding that everyone gets risen up?

Becoming a family doctor in Canada is a minimum 9-year (usually more) postsecondary education. That’s life they’re not getting back. And taxpayer-subsidized though it may be, most family doctors start their careers with six-figure student debt to pay off.

Being a family doctor is emotionally demanding, important to society, and increasingly complex. People can, and do, choose to make more money for less effort in other fields. It’s no longer a promising career path for intelligent young people, which is leading to a shortage of people doing work we all depend on.

So OK, maybe you have no sympathy for them. But don’t be surprised next time you need medical help and there’s nobody there to help you.

I don’t think the CMA has much power over this. Medical school and residency spots are controlled by provincial governments, and even the provincial medical associations exist at the will of provincial governments. I’m not saying you’re wrong that this might be the CRA’stake, but I don’t see much of a causal relationship there.

Much more immediate, I think, is the unwillingness of (more or less conservative, and as you point out, neoliberal) governments to fund medical schools and residencies because the impact on voters would take almost a decade, which is much longer than an election cycle.

I hate how these articles always dance around the main issue. Yes, team-based care is great. But what we really need is to urgently train thousands of family doctors and nurse practitioners. We have a massive shortage and it’s only getting worse. But nobody wants to pay for it, and even lefty outlets like The Walrus aren’t calling for urgent funding. I dread what this is going to look like in ten years.