Canada has a dental workforce problem, and everyone agrees on the diagnosis. The Canadian Dental Association (CDA) projects a shortfall of approximately 2,500 dental professionals across the country by 2028 if current trends hold. About 50% of dental offices nationwide report at least one vacancy — most commonly in dental assisting. Ontario alone has seen significant hygienist attrition between 2023 and 2025 due to retirement, career changes, and interprovincial migration. The Ontario Dental Association (ODA) flagged workforce sustainability as a top-three priority at its 2026 Annual Spring Meeting.
The standard responses to workforce shortages — raise wages, recruit internationally, expand immigration pathways — address immediate symptoms. Saskatchewan's approach is different. It targets the earliest stage of the career pipeline: the moment when a 15-year-old is deciding what interests them.
What Health Careers 20L Actually Covers
The course is not a dental-specific program. It introduces students to a wide range of health careers including nursing and patient care, medical diagnostics, pharmacy, mental health and addictions services, emergency care — and dentistry. Students also learn about emerging roles like Physician Assistants and Virtual Health Care Assistants.
What makes this course notable is its structure:
- Provincewide access through distance learning. Any student in grades 10-12 can take it through the Saskatchewan Distance Learning Centre (Sask DLC), regardless of where they live. This is critical in a province where many communities are hours from the nearest college campus. A student in La Ronge or Estevan has the same access as a student in Saskatoon.
- Partnership-driven curriculum. The course was developed jointly by the Ministry of Health, the Virtual Health Hub, and Saskatchewan Polytechnic — not by a single education ministry working in isolation. This collaboration means the curriculum reflects actual workforce needs rather than theoretical career exploration.
- Pathway integration. Completing the course connects students to further opportunities including job shadowing, employment within healthcare settings, and financial incentives. It is designed as a funnel into post-secondary health programs, not a standalone elective that leads nowhere.
The Government of Saskatchewan announced the course in March 2026, and it became available for the 2026-27 school year starting in September.
Why This Matters for Ontario
Ontario faces the same workforce pressures as Saskatchewan — arguably worse. The province has the largest number of dental practices in Canada, the highest patient volumes (amplified by the Canadian Dental Care Plan enrollment), and a training pipeline that is contracting rather than expanding.
Financial pressures across Ontario's post-secondary sector have already led to the suspension of several community college dental assisting programs. The Student Aid changes introduced federally in early 2026 further threaten the training pipeline by making it harder for students to finance health education programs. Meanwhile, the Royal College of Dental Surgeons of Ontario (RCDSO) has flagged that baby boomer dentists are retiring at accelerating rates, while dental school graduation rates remain flat.
The result is a widening gap between supply and demand that no amount of wage increases alone can close. You cannot hire a dental hygienist who does not exist. You cannot retain a dental assistant who never entered the field because they did not know it was an option.
Pro Tip: If your Ontario dental practice is struggling to fill dental assisting or hygienist positions, contact your local high school's guidance department and offer to participate in career day presentations or job shadowing programs. These informal pipeline-building activities are exactly what Saskatchewan has now formalized into a provincewide course.
The Pipeline Problem Is Not Just About Pay
The conventional narrative around dental workforce shortages focuses on compensation: raise hygienist salaries, offer signing bonuses, improve benefits. These interventions matter — Ontario dental hygienist pay has been climbing through 2026 as CDCP demand strains supply — but they treat only the demand side of the equation.
The supply side has a more fundamental problem: awareness. High school students choosing between career paths often have limited exposure to dental professions beyond their own experience as patients. They know what a dentist does (sort of). They may not know that dental hygiene is a regulated profession with a two-year diploma and starting salaries that compare favourably to many four-year degrees. They almost certainly do not know that dental assisting is a career with immediate employability and a clear advancement path.
Saskatchewan's course addresses this blind spot directly. By putting dentistry alongside nursing, pharmacy, and emergency care in a structured curriculum, it normalizes dental careers as a serious professional pathway — not a backup plan.
What Other Provinces Are Doing
Saskatchewan is not operating in a vacuum. Other provinces have taken different approaches to the workforce pipeline challenge:
- Northern Ontario: Colleges in northern communities have revived dental assisting programs that had been suspended, responding to acute staffing shortages that left practices unable to serve CDCP patients.
- Federal level: Health Canada invested $35 million CAD into dental school training in 2026, specifically to increase capacity for CDCP-driven patient volume. However, this funding targets existing post-secondary programs — not the high school awareness gap.
- Ontario immigration pathways: The Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program (OINP) overhaul in 2026 created new healthcare-specific immigration streams, potentially bringing internationally trained dental professionals into the province faster. This addresses immediate shortages but does not build a domestic pipeline.
Each of these approaches fills a different part of the pipeline. Saskatchewan's contribution is unique because it targets the earliest point: the moment a teenager starts thinking about what they want to do with their life.
Could Ontario Adopt a Similar Model?
Ontario's education system is structured differently from Saskatchewan's. The Ontario curriculum is governed by the Ministry of Education, with courses developed through a formal review process that typically takes several years. Saskatchewan's advantage was the Sask DLC — a distance learning centre with the infrastructure to develop and deliver a provincewide course relatively quickly.
Ontario does have comparable infrastructure. The Independent Learning Centre (ILC) and TVO's virtual learning programs offer distance education across the province. Ontario colleges already deliver dual-credit programs that allow high school students to take college-level courses. A Health Careers course modeled on Saskatchewan's approach could theoretically be delivered through these existing channels.
The political will may also be building. The ODA has identified workforce sustainability as a strategic priority. The College of Dental Hygienists of Ontario (CDHO) is expanding hygienist scope of practice, partly to address the shortage by allowing existing professionals to do more. And the Ontario government's broader healthcare human resources strategy — driven by nursing and physician shortages — could create an umbrella under which dental workforce programs gain traction.
Pro Tip: Ontario dental professionals who want to advocate for a similar high school career awareness program should contact the ODA's advocacy team and their local MPP. Reference Saskatchewan's Health Careers 20L as a proven model. Provincial governments respond to specific, replicable examples — not abstract policy proposals.
What Practice Owners Can Do Now
Waiting for a provincial program is a multi-year proposition. In the meantime, individual practices can build their own micro-pipelines:
- Partner with local high schools. Offer dental career presentations at career fairs. Bring your hygienist and dental assistant — students respond to professionals who look like them and can describe a realistic career path.
- Create co-op placements. Ontario's high school co-op program allows students to earn credits while working in a dental practice. This is the single most effective recruitment tool for dental assisting: a student who spends 110 hours in your office and enjoys it is likely to pursue dental assisting post-graduation.
- Sponsor local dental assisting students. Tuition for a dental assisting program in Ontario is approximately $5,000-8,000 CAD. Sponsoring a student in exchange for a 12-18 month employment commitment is cheaper than months of recruitment advertising and temporary staffing fees.
- Highlight career paths for your existing team. A dental assistant who sees a clear path to practice management, expanded duties, or further education is less likely to leave the field entirely. Visible advancement reduces attrition.
The Bigger Picture: Workforce as Infrastructure
The CDCP has enrolled over 6.3 million Canadians — and the dental workforce has not grown proportionally. CDCP preauthorization processing times in Ontario stretched past 30 days in August 2026. Wait times for dental appointments in some provinces have reached nine months. The program's success has exposed a capacity constraint that was always there but is now impossible to ignore.
Saskatchewan's Health Careers 20L course is modest in scope. It will not produce dentists or hygienists for another 6-8 years. But it represents something important: a provincial government treating the dental workforce as infrastructure worth investing in at the foundation level, not just patching at the surface.
For Ontario dental professionals watching from across the country, the question is straightforward: if Saskatchewan can do it, why not us?
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is Saskatchewan's Health Careers 20L course and how does it relate to dentistry?
Health Careers 20L is a provincewide high school course available to all Saskatchewan students in grades 10-12 starting in the 2026-27 school year. Developed by the Saskatchewan Distance Learning Centre with Saskatchewan Polytechnic and the Ministry of Health, it introduces students to healthcare careers including dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, and emergency care. The course connects to job shadowing opportunities and post-secondary health programs, making it the first formal provincial effort to build dental workforce awareness at the high school level.
Q: How bad is the dental workforce shortage in Canada in 2026?
The Canadian Dental Association projects a shortfall of approximately 2,500 dental professionals by 2028. About 50% of dental offices across Canada report at least one vacancy, most commonly in dental assisting roles. Ontario has experienced significant dental hygienist attrition since 2023, and several community college dental assisting programs have been suspended due to financial pressures. The enrollment of over 6.3 million Canadians in the CDCP has amplified demand without a corresponding increase in workforce supply.
Q: Can Ontario dental practices build their own workforce pipelines without waiting for a provincial program?
Yes. Individual practices can partner with local high schools to offer career day presentations and co-op placements through Ontario's existing high school co-op program. Sponsoring dental assisting students (approximately $5,000-8,000 CAD tuition) in exchange for an employment commitment is often cheaper than extended recruitment. These micro-pipeline strategies build long-term workforce supply while addressing immediate hiring needs.