I stood on my neighbor’s porch in East Vancouver last Wednesday, having an unexpected conversation about cancer. Sarah, a vibrant 42-year-old teacher, had just received a diagnosis. But instead of discussing her oncologist’s treatment plan, she was showing me Facebook posts about alternative cancer cures—baking soda protocols and coffee enemas that promised more than conventional medicine ever could.
“My doctor appointment was four months out,” she explained, scrolling through a closed Facebook group with over 40,000 members. “I found this community the next day.”
This moment crystallizes a dangerous convergence in Canadian healthcare: a critical shortage of family physicians and specialists alongside an explosion of health misinformation online. The vacuum created by one is being filled by the other, with potentially devastating consequences.
Canada’s doctor shortage has reached crisis proportions. According to Statistics Canada, nearly 4.5 million Canadians lack a primary care provider. In British Columbia alone, where I live and report, approximately 900,000 residents have no family doctor. Wait times for specialists can stretch beyond a year.
Dr. Katherine Smart, past president of the Canadian Medical Association, told me, “When people can’t access legitimate healthcare, they become vulnerable to misinformation. The internet becomes their primary care provider by default.”
This relationship between access barriers and misinformation susceptibility is what Dr. Timothy Caulfield, Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy at the University of Alberta, calls “a perfect storm.” His research teams have documented sharp increases in health misinformation during periods of healthcare system strain.
“People aren’t turning to questionable sources because they’re gullible,” Dr. Caulfield explained during our conversation at a recent medical humanities conference in Vancouver. “They’re doing it because they’re desperate for answers in a system that’s making them wait months or years for care.”
Last spring, I traveled to Williams Lake, a small city in B.C.’s interior where nearly 40% of residents lack primary care. At a community center, I met Robin Hearsey, a grandmother who’d been managing her rheumatoid arthritis through YouTube videos and Facebook groups for almost two years while waiting for a rheumatologist.
“My joints were swelling, and I was in constant pain,” she told me, showing her notebook filled with treatment ideas culled from social media. “When the medical system abandons you, you do what you have to.”
Her story is increasingly common. Health Canada has documented a troubling rise in adverse events related to unproven treatments discovered online. Dr. Najma Ahmed, a trauma surgeon in Toronto, describes seeing patients with complications from alternative remedies they pursued while waiting for specialist appointments.
“By the time they reach me, some conditions have progressed far beyond where they would have been with earlier intervention,” she explained. “The delay created by pursuing unproven treatments compounds the delay already built into our overstretched system.”
Social media platforms have transformed how health information spreads. Unlike traditional media sources, where medical expertise was vetted, platforms like TikTok and Facebook allow anyone to broadcast health claims to millions without review. In a 2022 survey by the Public Health Agency of Canada, 67% of respondents reported encountering health information on social media that they later discovered was false or misleading.
What makes this misinformation so potent is how personalized it has become. Machine learning algorithms quickly identify users searching for health information and funnel them toward content that matches their interests—regardless of its accuracy.
Timothy Cautela, who now works with MediaSmarts, Canada’s centre for digital media literacy, showed me how this works. After searching for “joint pain relief” and “doctor waiting list” on his phone, his TikTok feed transformed within hours to feature chiropractors claiming to cure autoimmune conditions and supplement sellers targeting the chronically ill.
“The algorithms don’t distinguish between evidence-based medicine and pseudoscience,” he noted. “They simply serve content that keeps you engaged—and fear, miracle cures, and conspiracy theories are incredibly engaging.”
When I visited the Northern Health Authority offices in Prince George last month, Dr. Saumya Selvaraj described treating patients who’d delayed cancer treatments based on online advice. “What breaks my heart is that many of these patients tell me they wouldn’t have gone down these rabbit holes if they could have discussed their concerns with a family doctor they trusted.”
Communities with significant doctor shortages show greater consumption of alternative health information online. Health Canada has begun mapping this relationship, finding that regions with the longest wait times also experience higher rates of adverse events related to unregulated health products.
The solution requires addressing both problems simultaneously. Physician recruitment and training must increase dramatically, especially in underserved communities. British Columbia’s recent initiative to train rural family physicians by placing medical residents in communities like Terrace and Fort St. John offers one approach, though results will take years to materialize.
Meanwhile, organizations like the Canadian Association of Science Communicators are developing “prebunking” strategies—training people to recognize misinformation before encountering it. The Public Health Agency of Canada has launched a digital literacy campaign specifically targeting health misinformation.
Dr. Smart emphasizes that healthcare providers must acknowledge patients’ frustrations with the system. “When people feel unheard or abandoned by conventional medicine, they become more receptive to alternatives, regardless of evidence,” she said. “Acknowledging these gaps in care while still providing evidence-based guidance is essential.”
Back on my neighbor Sarah’s porch, our conversation continued past sunset. She showed me dozens of private groups catering to Canadian patients who feel abandoned by the healthcare system. Each group offered some combination of emotional support and unverified medical advice.
“I know I need to be careful,” she said, putting down her phone. “But when you’re facing something terrifying and you can’t get answers from the medical system, these communities feel like a lifeline, even if part of you knows they might be steering you wrong.”
The tragedy isn’t just that Canadians are encountering health misinformation—it’s that our healthcare system’s failures have made them more vulnerable to it. Fixing this problem requires more than fact-checking. It demands rebuilding a healthcare system that doesn’t leave millions with Google as their primary care provider and Facebook groups as their specialists.
Until we bridge those gaps, people like my neighbor Sarah will continue facing impossible choices between waiting for care they desperately need and embracing alternatives that promise everything conventional medicine cannot: immediate answers, compassionate attention, and hope—however false it might be.
