Canada's dental workforce shortage is undermining the Canadian Dental Care Plan's promise of universal access, with dental assistant vacancies running 20% below need in some provinces and internationally trained dentists facing licensing processes that cost more than $12,000 and take three to five years to complete. As of July 2026, the 2026-2027 CDCP benefit year is underway with more than 6 million enrolled Canadians, but staffing constraints mean many of those patients face wait times of nine months or longer for basic hygiene appointments.
The Canadian Dental Care Plan (CDCP) was built on a simple premise: if cost is the barrier to dental care, remove the cost and people will see a dentist. The federal government has invested heavily in that premise, expanding eligibility to all age groups as of June 2026 and enrolling more than 6 million Canadians in the program. The problem is that removing the financial barrier revealed a second one that no amount of funding can solve quickly: there are not enough dental professionals to treat the patients who are now showing up.
The Numbers Behind the Shortage
Canada's dental workforce shortage is not a future risk — it is a present reality that is already reshaping how dental care is delivered across the country.
According to the Canadian Occupational Projection System, Canada faces a projected shortage of approximately 5,000 dentists by 2028. But the shortage is not limited to dentists. Dental assistants, dental hygienists, and denturists are all in short supply, and the assistant shortage is arguably the most acute because assistants are essential to every procedure a dentist performs. A practice cannot operate a full schedule without them.
In New Brunswick, the numbers tell a stark story. The province has approximately 400 practising dentists and an estimated 635 dental assistants — roughly 165 assistants short of the 800 the sector needs, according to Paul Blanchard, executive director of the New Brunswick Dental Society. Despite 85-90% of New Brunswick dentists participating in the CDCP, high provider uptake has not translated to adequate patient access because there simply are not enough hands to support the clinical workload.
The situation is similar across Atlantic Canada. Nova Scotia has reported more than 100 unfilled dental positions. Prince Edward Island has seen dental appointment wait times pushed to 2027 for some patients — a delay that has nothing to do with willingness to treat and everything to do with workforce capacity.
Where Ontario Stands
Ontario, home to roughly 40% of Canada's population and the largest concentration of dental practices in the country, faces its own version of the workforce crunch. The province has more dental schools and training programs than any other jurisdiction in Canada, yet graduating classes have not kept pace with the combined demand from population growth, CDCP enrollment, and the deferred-care backlog that accumulated during the pandemic years.
The Ontario Dental Association (ODA), under new president Dr. Janet Leith as of June 2026, has identified workforce sustainability as a priority for her term. The challenges are compounded by Ontario's broader healthcare staffing pressures — dental assistants and hygienists compete for talent with medical offices, hospitals, and long-term care facilities that are all facing their own shortages.
For practice owners in the Greater Toronto Area — Toronto, Mississauga, Brampton, Markham, Vaughan, Scarborough, Etobicoke, and North York — the staffing pressure manifests differently than in rural areas. Urban practices can usually fill positions, but at higher compensation levels that squeeze margins. A dental hygienist in the GTA commands a premium that reflects both the cost of living and the intensity of competition among practices for qualified candidates.
Ontario has also proposed scope of practice expansion for dental hygienists and denturists, a regulatory shift that could help alleviate some capacity constraints by allowing these professionals to perform certain procedures without direct dentist supervision. Whether this translates into meaningful capacity gains will depend on implementation details that the Royal College of Dental Surgeons of Ontario (RCDSO) has yet to finalize.
The Internationally Trained Dentist Bottleneck
Canada has a pool of internationally educated dentists (IEDs) who are trained, experienced, and eager to practise — but who face a licensing process that can take three to five years and cost more than $12,000 in examination fees alone. The National Dental Examining Board of Canada (NDEB) requires written examinations, an Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE), and in many cases, additional qualifying or degree completion programs.
The frustration among IEDs is well-documented. Many have practised dentistry for years in their home countries, hold advanced clinical skills, and relocate to Canada expecting a pathway to licensure that is rigorous but achievable within a reasonable timeframe. Instead, they encounter a multi-year process that leaves them unable to practise their profession while they wait — often working in unrelated fields to support their families.
The federal government has acknowledged the problem. In recent years, the Association of Canadian Faculties of Dentistry (ACFD) received support to develop a pilot program that fast-tracks licensure for internationally trained dentists. The goal is to integrate these professionals into Canada's healthcare workforce more quickly, without compromising clinical standards. As of mid-2026, the pilot program has begun accepting applicants, though its capacity remains limited relative to the volume of IEDs waiting for a pathway.
Pro Tip: Ontario practice owners looking to recruit internationally trained dentists should connect with the ACFD pilot program and monitor RCDSO's evolving requirements for IED credentialing. Practices that establish relationships with IED candidates early — through mentorship, observation opportunities, or continuing education partnerships — position themselves to hire qualified professionals as soon as they clear the licensing process.
Government Investment: Necessary but Not Sufficient
The federal government's primary tool for addressing the workforce shortage is the Oral Health Access Fund (OHAF), which has distributed approximately $43 million across 35 projects nationwide. These projects include training seat expansions at dental schools, dental assistant programs in underserved regions, and community health centre capacity building.
In New Brunswick, two institutions received $552,011 in combined OHAF grants to expand dental assistant and dental hygiene training. However, as the New Brunswick Dental Society's Paul Blanchard cautioned, these investments represent "necessary but gradual solutions to immediate capacity challenges." Training a dental assistant takes approximately one year; training a dental hygienist takes two to three years; training a dentist takes eight years from undergraduate through dental school. The pipeline is long, and the patients needing care are here now.
Health Canada has also invested $35 million in dental school training capacity, with a focus on expanding seats at Canadian dental faculties and supporting the integration of internationally trained dentists. Whether these investments can move the needle fast enough to prevent the CDCP from becoming a program where millions of Canadians have coverage but cannot find a provider is the central question facing Canadian dental policy in 2026.
What This Means for Dental Practice Owners
For practice owners across Canada, the workforce shortage creates both challenges and opportunities.
Retention is your competitive advantage. In a tight labour market, the practices that keep their team members are the practices that can keep treating patients. Workplace flexibility, continuing education support, clear career pathways, and competitive compensation are not luxuries — they are retention tools that directly affect your capacity to see patients.
Scope of practice changes are coming. Whether it is dental hygienists performing certain assessments independently or dental assistants taking on expanded intra-oral duties, regulatory bodies across Canada are moving toward allowing dental professionals to work closer to the top of their training. Practice owners who prepare for these changes — by cross-training staff, updating protocols, and investing in continuing education — will be better positioned to absorb the increased patient volume that the CDCP is driving.
Operational efficiency matters more than ever. When you cannot add more clinical hours because you cannot hire more staff, you need to extract more value from the hours you have. This means optimizing scheduling to minimize downtime, reducing no-shows through effective recall systems, and using technology — from practice management software to AI-powered tools — to handle administrative tasks that currently consume clinical staff time.
Pro Tip: Calculate your practice's revenue per clinical hour (total production divided by total clinical hours worked) and track it monthly. If this number is flat or declining while your patient demand is rising, the bottleneck is operational efficiency, not marketing. Focus on reducing chair time gaps, improving case acceptance, and minimizing administrative interruptions during clinical hours.
The Rural-Urban Divide
The workforce shortage hits differently in rural and remote communities. While GTA practices compete on compensation and culture to attract talent, practices in Northern Ontario, rural Atlantic Canada, and remote communities face a more fundamental problem: qualified dental professionals often do not want to live there.
Newfoundland and Labrador has attempted to address this through a provincial dental agreement that includes rural incentives — financial inducements for dental professionals who agree to practise in underserved areas. British Columbia's Health Professions Act overhaul includes provisions designed to make it easier for dental professionals to move between provinces and practise in underserved regions.
The Canadian Dental Association (CDA) has called for urgent action on dental care delivery in the North, where some Indigenous communities have no resident dental provider and rely on periodic fly-in clinics that can address acute needs but cannot provide the continuity of care that prevents disease progression.
For urban practice owners, the rural shortage has an indirect effect: it concentrates patient demand in cities, adding to the scheduling pressure that GTA practices already face. A patient from Parry Sound who cannot find a local dentist willing to accept CDCP fees may drive three hours to see a provider in Barrie or Orillia — and that provider's schedule is already strained.
Looking Ahead: The 2026-2027 CDCP Benefit Year
The 2026-2027 CDCP benefit year began on July 1, 2026, with more than 3.4 million Canadians successfully renewing their coverage and new applications open for those joining for the first time. Co-payment levels for the new benefit year are calculated based on 2025 adjusted family net income, meaning some patients will see changes in their out-of-pocket costs.
For dental practices, the new benefit year brings updated CDCP established fee schedules and ongoing preauthorization requirements that add administrative overhead. The preauthorization process — where certain procedures require advance approval from Sun Life before being performed — has been a source of frustration for providers who report delays and inconsistent approval decisions. The ODA has continued to advocate for streamlining this process, and whether the 2026-2027 benefit year brings meaningful improvements remains to be seen.
The fundamental tension is clear: the CDCP has succeeded in expanding access to dental coverage on paper, but the dental workforce that must deliver that care has not expanded at the same rate. Closing that gap will require sustained investment in training, faster pathways for internationally educated dentists, regulatory flexibility on scope of practice, and operational innovation within dental practices themselves. None of these solutions are quick, and all of them are necessary.
EBIKO Dental will continue monitoring workforce developments and their impact on Canadian dental practices.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How many Canadians are enrolled in the Canadian Dental Care Plan as of July 2026?
More than 6 million Canadians are enrolled in the CDCP as of mid-2026, with 3.4 million having successfully renewed for the 2026-2027 benefit year that began on July 1, 2026. Applications remain open for new enrollees. Eligibility expanded to all age groups as of June 2026, removing the previous phased rollout restrictions.
Q: How long does it take for an internationally trained dentist to get licensed in Canada?
The licensing process for internationally educated dentists (IEDs) in Canada typically takes three to five years and costs more than $12,000 in examination fees. Candidates must pass the National Dental Examining Board of Canada (NDEB) written and clinical examinations, and many require additional qualifying or degree completion programs. The Association of Canadian Faculties of Dentistry (ACFD) pilot program is working to create a faster pathway, though capacity remains limited as of mid-2026.
Q: What can Ontario dental practices do to address the dental workforce shortage?
Ontario practices can take several practical steps: invest in staff retention through competitive compensation and continuing education; prepare for scope of practice expansion by cross-training team members; optimize operational efficiency to maximize production per clinical hour; establish relationships with internationally trained dentist candidates through mentorship programs; and leverage technology tools — from AI-powered scheduling to automated recall systems — to reduce administrative burden on clinical staff. The Ontario Dental Association (ODA) and the Royal College of Dental Surgeons of Ontario (RCDSO) are both actively working on regulatory changes that may expand practice capacity.