Canada is way, way short on primary care providers, especially in rural and remote areas, yes. Nurse-practitioners can only fill in so many of the gaps left by the insufficient number of family physicians, and they also take time to train. We have emergency departments closing because of lack of personnel, and it’s literally killing people to have to drive forty or more minutes to the nearest hospital that’s open when they have a heart attack.
Forcing new physicians to practice for a year somewhere other than a major city would be much more useful than sending them back to school for an extra year.