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Ontario’s doctors are into their fourth year without a contract and, since 2015, the provincial government has unilaterally cut more than $3.5-billion from the patient services that physicians provide. These cuts to frontline care have left more than a million patients in Ontario without a family doctor, created unprecedented emergency room gridlock, and caused wait-times to explode (a patient can wait for up to three years to see a specialist). Faced with the largest debt of any sub-sovereign borrower in the world, the Ontario Liberals have resorted to rationing patient care. Combine these changes with multiple draconian pieces of provincial health-care legislation passed over the past year that hurt patients and strip doctors of their autonomy and human rights, and you have the making of a health-care system in crisis.

A majority of survey respondents reported burnout

Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s recently announced tax proposals could push many doctors to their breaking point. In 2000, Ontario granted physicians the ability to incorporate in lieu of fee increases. The government even encouraged doctors to use incorporation as a vehicle to save for their retirement. Although physicians bill the government for the patient services they provide, physicians are self-employed and have no pensions or benefits. Physicians cover all of their own overhead expenses (an average of 30 to 60 per cent of their fees fund health-care infrastructure), and must generally service an average student debt of $250,000 (accumulated from the 10 to 16 years of university training they are required to undergo). Physicians are unique small business owners in that they are not able to pass their increasing overhead expenses onto patients, as their fees are fixed by the government.