Exploring the flow of healthcare workers across Canada
Canada’s healthcare system depends on a stable and well-distributed workforce, but retention and migration trends reveal growing challenges.
This interactive dashboard visualizes where healthcare professionals working in various roles are staying, moving within provinces, relocating to other provinces, or leaving the country and workforce entirely. By mapping these patterns, the tool helps identify regions facing critical shortages and those benefiting from workforce inflows.
Users can explore migration dynamics over time, compare provincial trends, and uncover insights that support evidence-based planning and policy development. This visualization offers a lens on the shifting landscape of Canada’s healthcare workforce. Each role includes both a provincial and a regional map. Because data availability varies by role and data point at these levels, we recommend downloading the Data Availability document to guide your exploration.
You can explore the seven roles included in this tool by navigating to the dropdowns below.
Definitions
Intra-provincial migration: This indicator captures healthcare workers (domestic and internationally trained) who move between health regions within the same province. It is measured at the point of arrival in the destination region and includes only those entering that region. It does not capture individuals leaving a region, as their destination is not tracked, and excludes any movement to or from other provinces.
Interprovincial migration: This indicator captures healthcare workers (domestic and internationally trained) who move from a health region in one province to a health region in another province. It is measured at the point of arrival in the destination province and health region and includes only those entering from outside the province. It does not capture individuals leaving a province, as their destination is not tracked, and excludes movement within the same province.
Outmigration: This indicator captures healthcare workers who leave a health region or province to work in another country. It is measured based on license cancellations where individuals indicate, such as through self-reporting, an intention to move or work outside of Canada, and includes only those exiting the country. It does not capture individuals entering Canada from abroad. Where the reason for license cancellation is not collected or cannot be confirmed as leaving the country, outmigration is not reported.
Health region: Health regions in each province or territory are listed in parallel with CIHI’s Healthcare Workforce in Canada datasets.1 In some circumstances, an entire province or territory is encompassed by a single region (e.g, Prince Edward Island). Future versions of this dashboard will reflect updated provincial health regions.
Growth rate: This measures the percentage change in a value over a specified period of time compared with a previous period (the comparator). It indicates whether the number of new workers has increased or decreased, and by how much, relative to the previous year. Due to the need for a comparator, the first year in the dataset will not have a growth rate associated with it.
Dashboard updates
Each dashboard will be updated as new data becomes available. These updates are intended to improve the consistency, depth, and usefulness of the data presented. Priority areas for these updates include:
- aligning reporting years across healthcare roles to support comparability;
- expanding the availability of regional data where feasible;
- increasing the coverage of migration data as additional information becomes available.
As updates are implemented, the Data Availability document will be revised to reflect new data sources, coverage, and limitations. This approach is intended to provide users with clear and transparent information about what the dashboard captures at each point in time and how the data evolves across updates.
This dashboard shows physician proportions and movements between 2019 and 2024, using data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI). They allow users to explore the number of physicians in each health region and migration trends across regions and provinces. This map includes family physicians and specialists (combined) as defined by CIHI.
With this information, workforce planners can identify mobility trends and at-risk areas that may need targeted retention strategies.
Insights
Canada currently has 2.7 doctors per 1,000 population, well below the OECD average of 3.9.2 This gap underscores the urgency of monitoring physician movement and implementing strategies to stabilize the workforce.
Between 2019 and 2024, the Canadian physician workforce (excluding Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut due to unavailable data) expanded, including both family physicians (5.3 per cent growth) and specialists (11.3 per cent growth). When examining training origin over the 2019–2024 period, the share of domestically trained family physicians declined by nearly 1 per cent, while the proportion of internationally trained family physicians increased by 4.5 per cent.
Between 2019 and 2023, there was a large decrease in physician migration between provinces. Over this period, the number of family physicians moving across provincial lines fell by 60 per cent, while the number of specialists doing so fell by 55 per cent. In 2023, British Columbia saw the largest incoming cohorts of family physicians (57) and specialists (65) from other provinces. However, interprovincial migration can be quite volatile from year to year.
Outward migration of physicians remains very low. In 2023, only 0.1 per cent of physicians registered in Canada cancelled their licenses with the intent to live outside the country.
This dashboard provides data on the number of nurses in Canada and their movements between 2019 and 2025. This includes registered nurses (RNs), licensed practical nurses (LPNs, also known as registered practical nurses in Ontario), registered psychiatric nurses (RPNs), and nurse practitioners (NPs). In Canada, the nursing professions differ in the type of education received, training required, and scope of practice.
In 2025, the number of nurses per 1,000 population was 10.0, higher than the OECD average of 9.0.3 However, the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions estimated that over 30,000 nursing positions were vacant, with RNs and RPNs having a vacancy rate of 90 days or more.4 As the Canadian population continues to age, the demand for nurses of all professions remains critical.
Insights
Between 2021 and 2023, Canada saw an increase in the number of nurses working in direct-care roles. NPs experienced the largest growth, with a greater than 10 per cent increase to 7,841 in 2023. RNs, LPNs, and RPNs in direct-care roles all increased by between 0.9 and 3.3 per cent. RNs saw the largest overall increase in number of nurses, at nearly 4,000 additional nurses in 2023, while LPNs increased by over 2,100.
Recent trends indicate that the number of domestically trained nurses across most nursing professions grew between 2022 and 2024, reinforcing the importance of Canada’s domestic education and training pipeline. Growth has been strongest among LPNs, who experienced the largest year-over-year increase (4.2 per cent) in 2023. In contrast, RPNs stand out as the only nursing role showing a slowing growth trajectory, with population growth decelerating (1.1 per cent decrease) in 2024 following stronger gains in the previous year.
At the same time, internationally trained nurses are playing an increasingly important role in addressing workforce pressures—particularly among RNs, where international recruitment surged, with a 30 per cent increase in 2024. This pattern suggests growing reliance on internationally educated RNs to supplement domestic supply. However, trends vary across roles: the number of internationally trained LPNs declined (7.7 per cent decrease), and growth among NPs decreased slightly (1.3 per cent). Together, these patterns highlight both the opportunities and limits of international recruitment as a workforce strategy and underscore the need for role-specific planning across the nursing professions.
This dashboard illustrates the number of dentists practicing in Canada between 2019 and 2023, including those trained domestically and internationally. Dentists represent a distinct segment of the health workforce, delivering care across diverse settings such as private practices, hospitals, universities, and public health facilities. Their work is frequently supported through collaboration with dental hygienists, dental assistants, and laboratory technicians.
Across Canada, dentist availability varies considerably. Urban centres typically have more than 60 dentists per 100,000 people, while many rural regions have fewer than 30.5 In 2019, Canada was found to have 0.65 dentists per 1,000 people, lower than the OECD average of 0.71.6 This disparity highlights the importance of understanding how dentists are distributed across the country and examining the factors that influence workforce mobility within the profession.
Insights
Between 2019 and 2023, the number of dentists in Canada increased by more than 9.5 per cent, rising from 24,770 to 27,131. New Brunswick recorded the highest growth at 14.5 per cent, followed by British Columbia at 14.2 per cent and Ontario at 13.9 per cent. In contrast, Yukon and the Northwest Territories experienced the largest declines, at 20 per cent and 13.8 per cent, respectively. Among all provinces and territories, Quebec had the smallest change, with a net decrease of only six dentists over the four-year period.
This dashboard presents data on the number of pharmacists and their movements from 2021 to 2024. It captures the mobility of pharmacists working across community, hospital, and academic settings. With both the Canadian Pharmacists Association and the New Brunswick Pharmacists Association forecasting a growing shortage of pharmacists,7 this information identifies mobility patterns and regions where targeted retention efforts may be required.
Pharmacists play a critical role in medication management and are expanding their scope of practice as new healthcare technologies and innovations emerge.8 Today, pharmacists deliver a broad range of services, including medication reviews, immunizations, and chronic disease management. They also exercise prescribing authority in defined circumstances, complementing the care provided by physicians.
Canada currently has 93 practicing pharmacists per 100,000 people, exceeding the OECD average of 86.9 While this is encouraging, demand for pharmacists continues to increase as the population ages and the complexity of care grows.
Insights
Recent data suggests that the national pharmacist workforce has remained largely stable. While the number of pharmacists fell between 2022 and 2023, that contraction had slowed markedly by 2024. Data gaps for Manitoba and New Brunswick in 2024 limit comparability; however, based on historical patterns, their inclusion would likely have shifted the national picture toward modest growth rather than continued decline. One province that did not follow this stable trend was Nova Scotia, which saw a decrease of 136 pharmacists in 2024, despite a continuous growth trend during the three years prior.
Looking at sources of supply, internationally trained pharmacists are contributing more strongly to workforce growth than domestically trained graduates. Between 2021 and 2022, growth among internationally educated pharmacists outpaced that of domestically trained pharmacists by a wide margin (3.8 per cent versus 0.8 per cent).
This divergence underscores the growing importance of international pathways in sustaining the pharmacist workforce, particularly amid modest domestic growth and rising system pressures driven by an aging population.
This dashboard presents the number of physiotherapists, also referred to as physical therapists (PTs), practicing in Canada between 2021 and 2024. These figures encompass PTs working across a broad range of practice areas, with the aim of preventing, assessing and treating the impact of injury, disease, and disorders in a patient’s movement and function.10
Physiotherapy is a growing profession in Canada, yet we have fewer physiotherapists per capita than most other developed countries globally.11 In 2021, Canada had 0.67 PTs per 1,000 people, lower than the OECD average of 1.09.12 While more Canadians are seeking physiotherapy consultations over time, the average number of visits per patient has declined. This trend underscores the importance of understanding where demand for PTs is concentrated, how patient needs are evolving, and what strategies may help strengthen retention and capacity within the profession.
Insights
Canada’s physiotherapy workforce has experienced strong and sustained growth (13.7 per cent) in recent years, indicating expanding capacity within this profession. Growth has been steady year over year, from a 4.0 per cent increase in 2022 to a 4.9 per cent increase in 2024, reflecting a consistent upward trajectory rather than short-term fluctuations. This pattern suggests increasing demand for physiotherapy services and a workforce that has been able to scale in response.
Internationally trained physiotherapists have been the primary driver of this growth (27 per cent), expanding at a substantially faster rate than their domestically trained counterparts (10.4 per cent). While domestic training continues to contribute meaningfully to workforce supply, the much stronger growth among internationally educated physiotherapists underscores the growing importance of international pathways in meeting demand and supporting overall workforce expansion in this field.
This dashboard presents the movement patterns of occupational therapists (OTs) in Canada from 2021 to 2024, drawing on data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information. The analysis includes OTs practising across a wide range of clinical areas, including general physical health; cardiovascular and respiratory care; digestive, metabolic, and endocrine health; health promotion and wellness; mental health; musculoskeletal care; neurological rehabilitation; palliative care; and vocational rehabilitation.
OTs play a vital role within Canada’s broader rehabilitation and mobility workforce, delivering care to people of all ages, abilities, and health needs across community, clinical, and institutional settings. Despite their broad scope and essential contributions, OT shortages persist across the country, particularly in Indigenous, rural, and remote communities, highlighting the need for targeted workforce planning and strategies to support equitable access to care. Between 2020 and 2024, the number of OTs employed in direct care increased slightly from 3.7 to 3.8 per 10,000 population.
Insights
Overall, both domestic and internationally trained occupational therapist groups saw increases in this timeframe. Several noteworthy changes in these groups included the continued expansion (9.1 per cent) in recent years, reflecting sustained demand for these services across the health system. Growth accelerated most notably in 2024, when the number of new OTs reached 510. This signals a renewed momentum in overall workforce supply and an increasing number of new entrants to the profession.
Between 2021 and 2024, growth in Canada’s occupational therapy workforce was driven primarily by domestically trained professionals, whose numbers increased steadily from 18,842 to 20,533, reinforcing the central role of domestic education pathways in sustaining supply. Internationally trained occupational therapists also increased over this period, rising from 1,203 to 1,344, and while they represent a much smaller share of the workforce, their faster relative growth highlights the growing importance of international pathways as a supplementary source of capacity. Taken together, these trends suggest a stable and gradually evolving workforce, with domestic training continuing to anchor occupational therapy supply and international recruitment providing incremental flexibility to help meet future demand pressures.
Medical radiation technologists (MRTs) represent a diverse group of health professionals that includes radiological technologists, radiation therapists, nuclear medicine technologists, magnetic resonance technologists, and diagnostic medical sonographers. This visualization presents the total number of MRTs across these professions between 2022 and 2025.
MRTs generate high-quality diagnostic images and deliver therapeutic procedures using advanced medical technologies. Their work supports accurate diagnosis, informs clinical decision-making, and contributes directly to treatments involving ionizing radiation. Many MRTs are certified in multiple specialties and may practice across more than one area; in these cases, their primary area of practice is defined as the one in which they work the greatest number of hours.
Insights
National trends for medical radiation technologists (MRTs) must be interpreted cautiously, as the profession is not regulated in all provinces and reportable data is limited to jurisdictions with established regulatory bodies. Within these constraints, available data suggests modest but uneven growth across MRT roles and provinces. Between 2023 and 2024, Alberta experienced consistent increases in domestically trained radiological technologists, radiation therapists, and magnetic resonance technologists, with each growing by more than 2.6 per cent. Ontario showed similar growth in radiological technologists and magnetic resonance technologists, but this was offset by declines among radiation therapists and nuclear medicine technologists, indicating role-specific variation within the province.
Trends in diagnostic sonography point to more consistent growth across jurisdictions. Between 2024 and 2025, the number of diagnostic sonographers increased in every province with available data except Manitoba, where workforce levels remained unchanged. Taken together, these patterns highlight both regional and occupational differences in MRT workforce dynamics, underscoring the importance of role-specific and jurisdiction-specific planning when assessing future capacity.
Physicians
Data for physicians on provincial, regional, interprovincial migration, and outmigration data for 2019 and 2023–2024 was obtained from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI).16
Nurses
Canadian nursing data was retrieved from several sources. Publicly available provincial and regional data for nurse practitioners, registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, and registered psychiatric nurses for 2019–2024 was retrieved from CIHI.17
A custom data request was submitted to the following organizations, which provided data as noted below:
- College of Licensed Practical Nurses of Newfoundland and Labrador: provincial and regional data for licensed practical nurses in Newfoundland and Labrador for 2024 and 2025;
- College of Registered Nurses of Newfoundland and Labrador: provincial and regional data for nurse practitioners and registered nurses in Newfoundland and Labrador for 2023 and 2024;
- Ordre des infirmières et infirmiers auxiliaires du Québec: provincial, regional, interprovincial and intra-provincial migration data for licensed practical nurses in Quebec for 2024 and 2025;
- College of Registered Psychiatric Nurses of Saskatchewan: provincial and regional data for registered psychiatric nurses in Saskatchewan for 2024 and 2025.
Dentists
Canadian dentist data was retrieved from CIHI.18 This included provincial data for dentists. Prior data years varied by province due to data availability as shown below:
- Newfoundland and Labrador and Ontario: 2019, 2023;
- Alberta, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Yukon, and Northwest Territories: 2019, 2021–2023;
- British Columbia: 2019, 2022, 2023.
Pharmacists
Data for pharmacists was obtained from multiple sources. CIHI provided provincial and regional data for 2021–2024.19 A custom data request was also submitted to the Alberta College of Pharmacy, which provided provincial, regional, interprovincial migration, and intra-provincial migration data for Alberta for 2023 and 2024.
Physiotherapists
Provincial and regional data for physiotherapists for 2021–2024 was retrieved from CIHI.20
Occupational therapists
Provincial and regional data for occupational therapists for 2021–2024 was retrieved from CIHI.21
Medical radiation technologists
Data for medical radiation technologists was obtained from multiple custom data sources. These included:
- Alberta College of Medical Diagnostic and Therapeutic Technologists
- Proportion and regional data for radiological technologists, radiation therapists, magnetic resonance technologists, and nuclear medical technologists in Alberta for 2023 and 2024
- Shared Health—Manitoba
- Proportion and regional data for radiological technologists, radiation therapists, and magnetic resonance technologists in Manitoba for 2023 and 2024
- Newfoundland and Labrador Health Services
- Regional, intra-provincial and interprovincial migration, and outmigration data from Newfoundland and Labrador’s Eastern zone for radiation therapists for 2025
- College of Medical Radiation and Imaging Technologists of Ontario
- Proportional, regional, interprovincial migration, and outmigration data for radiological technologists, radiation therapists, nuclear medical technologists, magnetic resonance technologists, and diagnostic medical sonographers in Ontario for 2023 and 2024
- Ordre des technologues en imagerie médicale, en radio-oncologie et en électrophysiologie médicale du Québec
- Proportional and regional data for radiological technologists, radiation therapists, nuclear medical technologists, and diagnostic medical sonographers in Quebec for 2022 and 2025
- College of Medical Radiation and Imaging Professionals of Saskatchewan
- Proportional data for radiological technologists, radiation therapists, nuclear medical technologists, magnetic resonance technologists, and diagnostic medical sonographers in Saskatchewan for 2023 and 2024
- Canadian Institute for Health Information, “Health Workforce in Canada: Overview.”
- Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, “Health at a Glance 2025: Canada.”
- Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, “Health at a Glance 2025: Canada.”
- Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, Canada’s Nursing Shortage at a Glance.
- Statistics Canada, “Oral Health Professionals in Canada, 2021.”
- Global Economy, The, “Dentists per 1,000 people—Country rankings.”
- Canadian Pharmacists Association, “Pharmacy Workforce Issues.”
- Canadian Pharmacists Association, “Scope of Practice.”
- Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, “Health at a Glance 2025: Canada.”
- Canadian Institute for Health Information, “Physiotherapists.”
- Deloitte, Economic Impact of Physiotherapy in Canada.
- Global Economy, The, “Physiotherapists per 1,000 people—Country rankings.”
- Conference Board of Canada, The, The Market Profile of Physiotherapists in Canada.
- Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists, Standing Committee on Health: Study on Canada’s Health Workforce Brief.
- Canadian Institute for Health Information, “Occupational Therapists.”
- Canadian Institute for Health Information, “Physicians.”
- Canadian Institute for Health Information, “Data Tables—Nursing in Canada.”
- Canadian Institute for Health Information, “Data Tables—Health Workforce in Canada.”
- Canadian Institute for Health Information, “Pharmacists.”
- Canadian Institute for Health Information, “Physiotherapists.”
- Canadian Institute for Health Information, “Occupational Therapists.”
FSC partners
The responsibility for the findings and conclusions of this research rests entirely with Signal49 Research.