TORONTO — The Ford government has committed $3.4 billion to its Primary Care Action Plan, yet the percentage of Ontarians attached to a primary care provider has barely moved from levels reported two years earlier.Deputy Premier and Health Minister Sylvia Jones told reporters Monday that more than 511,000 people have been connected to a primary care provider since the plan launched in January 2025. She also said more than 470,000 people have been cleared from the Health Care Connect waitlist and that wait times are at their lowest levels in more than a decade.A technical briefing document released by the Ministry of Health shows the 511,000 figure is an interim estimate as of May 2026. Attachment data lag by roughly one quarter. Quarterly net new attachments since early 2025 have ranged from 74,000 to 94,000.The same document states that Ontario’s attachment rate stands at 88.7%. Canadian Institute for Health Information survey data had put the figure at 88.5% in 2024. Dr. Jane Philpott, chair of the Primary Care Action Team, said the two numbers come from different methodologies and fall within the expected margin of difference. She did not claim the rate has risen substantially..The plan was designed to close the gap for the roughly two million Ontarians still without a regular provider. The ministry’s deck says the province remains on track to connect everyone by 2029. It lists successive rounds of funding for new and expanded primary care teams: a $235 million call in 2025-26 that supported more than 130 teams, a $250 million call in 2026-27, and a further $250 million call launched in September 2026 that closes Nov. 20. The 2026 budget added $325 million annually, bringing the four-year total to $3.4 billion.Individual team awards are smaller. A Sudbury Family Health Team received $542,300 and has attached more than 2,200 patients. An Ottawa community health centre site received $1.147 million and has attached more than 3,000. The ministry has also allocated $300 million for 18 primary care teaching clinics, $4.5 million for registered nurse upskilling, and smaller sums for nurse practitioner and physician assistant training seats.As of Oct. 1, 2026, about 61,000 people remained on the Health Care Connect referral list, and 85% of them had been waiting less than one year. Jones said the government has added more than 20,000 physicians since 2018 and is recruiting from the United States. She pointed to scope-of-practice changes and pharmacy minor-ailment programs as measures that have reduced low-acuity visits to emergency departments.Critics of large primary care spending have long questioned whether net gains keep pace with population growth and physician retirements. The ministry’s own figures show the attachment percentage has not moved far from the 2024 survey level even as the cumulative expenditure has climbed into the billions. The data lag and the still-open gap of roughly two million people leave the 2029 target dependent on future rounds of team funding and continued recruitment.The next call for proposals closes Nov. 20. The ministry expects it to support approximately 78 new or expanded teams and attach another 600,000 people.
