Pan-Canadian Licensing: Why It Matters for Patients, Nurses, Pharmacists, and Physicians Alike
As Canada’s premiers meet to discuss economic and trade matters, healthcare organizations across the country are aligning their voices to ensure that the health of Canadians remains at the forefront of political conversations. Among the most urgent priorities: improving labour mobility for healthcare workers across provincial and territorial borders.
At Orleans Family Health Clinic, where we pride ourselves on a team-based model that includes physicians, nurses, and pharmacists working in coordinated care, we strongly support a national strategy that breaks down the licensing barriers that prevent qualified healthcare professionals from moving more easily across the country to serve communities in need.
Currently, licensing for health professionals like doctors, nurses, and pharmacists is governed by each province or territory. This means that even highly trained professionals—often educated under national standards—must navigate a complicated, expensive, and time-consuming process just to practice in another part of the country.
This patchwork approach creates unnecessary bottlenecks, slows down recruitment, and leaves gaps in coverage—particularly in rural, remote, and underserviced regions.
As Dr. Margot Burnell, President of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA), recently explained: “The government has focused on the economy of the country, and what we’re trying to stress is that the most valuable asset to a government is really having a healthy community. A healthy community leads to a healthy economy.”
The CMA, alongside the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA), is urging premiers to establish pan-Canadian licensing frameworks. These frameworks would allow health professionals to move and practice across Canada without having to restart the licensing process from scratch in each province.
This is not just a physician issue. According to CNA President Kimberly LeBlanc, “Fragmented nursing licensure and regulation limit the mobility of our health workforce and delay care. A coordinated approach would not only improve access to health services, it would also support a more agile, competitive economy.”
The same holds true for pharmacists, who are essential providers in chronic disease management, medication reviews, and minor ailment care. Like doctors and nurses, pharmacists often face jurisdictional barriers when trying to move between provinces—barriers that reduce system-wide flexibility in addressing urgent care needs.
Some progress is being made. The Atlantic provinces have created a regional registry that allows physicians licensed in one of the four provinces to work across the entire region. But these kinds of efforts need to be scaled up nationally.
The federal One Canadian Economy Act proposes greater national recognition of certifications for many industries but excludes healthcare licensing. For meaningful change to occur, provincial and federal leaders must come together in a spirit of cooperation and urgency to modernize our health system infrastructure—including how we credential the people who keep Canadians healthy.
At Orleans Family Health Clinic, we stand with our partners at the CMA, CNA, and national pharmacist associations in calling for pan-Canadian licensing reform. This change is not just about convenience for health professionals—it’s about timely, complete, and coordinated care for Canadians, wherever they live.
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