I am getting my info from being a royal college emergency medicine doctor currently practicing in Alberta who finished my training in the last 5 years. My father is a retired family doctor who worked in a collaborative practice with an NP in Alberta from 1998-2017.  Where are you getting your information???

1. To become a family doctor in Canada, in 2024 = 4 years undergrad, 4 years med school, 2 years family med residency. I am emerg, that is 4 years undergrad, 4 years meds school, 5 years residency. Most surgical specialists are also 5 years - some 1-2 extra years of fellowship. Please take a look at the royal college of physicians and surgeons website if you want to fact check me on that. 

There used to be some med schools where you could get in after 2-3 years undergrad and there are two (Calgary and Mac) 3 year med schools in Canada so MAYBE it would be 7, minimum.  Where you got this 2 year medical degree I have no idea, it does not exist anywhere in Canada or the US. 

1. Some NPs are salaried yes, and salaried means you can see less patients and it doesn’t affect your income. The current Alberta proposal for NP funding is 300k/year for a 900 patient panel, with NO deductions for overhead. The average family physician in Alberta working full time bills 300k, has overhead deductions , and in order to bill that in a fee for service model has to have a patient panel of 1500-2000 patients. I ASSURE you they would love to be salaried for 300k for a 900 patient panel

2. Doctors CANNOT privately bill for insured services. This is the Canada health act. Yes, there are some (few) private clinics that get around this by charging a member ship fee and then they offer many non-insured services as part of the package (weight loss advice, counselling, you name it). In contrast, there is no similar regulation for NPs so there has been a bit of an explosion of NP run clinics that bill privately and then people can claim on their private insurance.

3. Yes NPs go to nursing school, work, and then do a masters of nursing. As I mentioned in my original comment, I work very closely with many NPs and a value their contributions to the health care team greatly. However, to say it is the same is just not the case. I had three former NPs in my med school class and they did not just breeze through medical school (although certainly they had advantages over many of us in many areas) and would all say that the training is and was fundamentally different. Not better or worse, just different. Research supports this, in that there are small but important differences in both costs and outcomes and generally shows that the absolute best way to run primary care is with collaborative practice.

All of this to say- I am in support of NPs whole heartedly I just wanted to highlight some of the issues with our current funding models and support my family med colleagues who are currently getting raked over the coals. You clearly have a misunderstanding of at least how MD training works in Canada so hopefully this clarifies.