31% of Recent Immigrants Don’t Have a Regular Health Care Provider in Canada, StatCan Finds

An RHCP is a health professional who knows your history, can give advice and preventative care, and can refer you to specialists if needed. An RHCP can be a family doctor, general practitioner, nurse practitioner, or medical specialist. Having an RHCP is one of the most basic ways to stay healthy in Canada. Equitable access to a regular health care provider is also an indicator of social inclusion. 

The studies, however, find gaps in access to regular health care providers by immigration status, race, region, and time spent in Canada.

Key Takeaways 

• In 2024, 69% of recent immigrants reported having a regular health care provider, compared to 85% of immigrants who arrived more than a decade ago and 82% of people born in Canada. 

• Among recent immigrants, access to RHCPs was lowest in Quebec (44%) and the Atlantic provinces (41%) for recent immigrants, compared to 75% in Ontario. 

• 31% of recent immigrants currently have no regular health care provider, and nearly one in four has never had one in Canada. 

• Racialized Canadians were less likely than non-racialized, non-Indigenous Canadians to have a provider, but the gap closed with age. 

Access to Regular Health Care Providers Grows with Time  

Using data from the 2024 Survey on Health Care Access and Experiences, the Statistics Canada study examined how access to a regular health care provider (RHCP) differs by immigration status. 

In 2024, 69% of recent immigrants, those who became permanent residents within the past 10 years, reported having an RHCP. In contrast, 85% of established immigrants (in Canada for 10+ years) reported having an RHCP. The researchers suggest that this increase was due to increasing familiarity with health systems over time, but also greater need for health care as the immigrants grow older. 

Newer immigrants also tend to be younger and healthier than established immigrants and non-immigrants. This can be attributed both to the selection criteria for immigration programs, which often include age as a heavily weighted factor, as well as health screenings to rule out medical inadmissibility. 

The study also highlighted that established immigrants reported having greater access to an RHCP than people born in Canada (82%). 

Older people, regardless of their immigration status, were more likely to have a regular health care provider, compared to their younger counterparts. 

Only 41% of Recent Immigrants in Atlantic Canada Had RHCPs 

The national 69% average for recent immigrants does not capture how uneven access to regular health care providers is across regions. 

In Ontario, 75% of recent immigrants reported having a regular health care provider. In Quebec, that figure was 44%. In the Atlantic provinces, it dropped down to 41%. 

Low RHCP access in some of these regions wasn’t limited to recent immigrants alone. In Quebec, 68% of established immigrants reported having a provider, compared to 75% in the Atlantic provinces. In the Prairies, established immigrants (88%) exceeded the Canadian-born rate in their region (83%). 

The study suggests that this likely reflects regional variation in health system capacity, including provider shortages. However, new immigrants who are unfamiliar with the health care system, and more likely to be looking for an RHCP, are impacted the most by an already overwhelmed system. 

1 in 3 Recent Immigrant Men Reported Having No RHCP 

Men across all groups report lower access than women, which researchers link to lower health care utilization overall. The gap is widest for recent immigrant men. 

Among recent immigrants, 72% of women reported having a regular health care provider in 2024. In contrast, only 66% of recent immigrant men had an RHCP. In comparison, for established immigrants, 87% of women reported RHCP access compared to 83% of men. 

The gender differences showed up the most among Canadian-born individuals, where there was an eight percentage point gap between access to an RHCP among women and men (78% men versus 86% women). 

35% of Adults Without an RHCP Were on Provider Waitlists 

31% of recent immigrants reported not having a regular health care provider at all, compared to 15.1% of established immigrants and 17.7% of people born in Canada. 

23% of recent immigrants without a provider reported never having had an RHCP in Canada. In comparison, only 9% Canadian-born adults had never had one. 

Among people without a provider, the most cited reasons were being on a waitlist (35%), no providers accepting new patients (30%), and having had a provider who left, retired, or changed practice (29%). 

45.1% of recent immigrants without a provider reported having no usual place for non-urgent primary care or advice at all. For established immigrants and people born in Canada, that figure was around 38%.  

Walk-in clinics were the most common fallback across all groups, with over one-third of adults without an RHCP using one. However, recent immigrants were less likely than non-immigrants to report using a community health centre. 

Only 79% of Racialized Canadians Had Access to an RHCP 

Overall, 79% of racialized adults reported having a regular health care provider, compared to 84% of non-racialized, non-Indigenous Canadians. Filipino Canadians had the highest access at 86%. Arab (71%), Latin American (72%), Southeast Asian (72%), and Black (73%) Canadians reported the lowest rates. 

Among racialized recent immigrants, 73% reported access to an RHCP. Within that group, Filipino Canadians had the highest rate of access at 84%, while Arab (60%) and Black (64%) Canadians had the lowest. 

Age plays a significant role. Among racialized adults aged 18 to 34, 66% reported having a provider, compared to 78% of their non-racialized, non-Indigenous counterparts. That gap narrowed with age and was no longer statistically significant among adults 65 and over. 

What This Means for Newcomers 

If you’ve arrived in Canada recently or are planning to move soon, finding a regular health care provider, such as a family physician, is worth prioritizing as waitlists are long and doctors in many regions are operating at capacity. 

That said, data shows that access to a regular health care provider improves significantly with time in Canada. Among immigrants who have been here for more than a decade, 85% report having one, slightly above the rate for people born in Canada.