SAC-Ontario continues to advocate for policies that strengthen the speech-language pathology and audiology workforce to improve access to essential communication health services across the province.
Ensuring Ontario has qualified professionals, particularly in rural and underserved areas, is critical to supporting patients and reducing system pressures. SAC’s advocacy focuses on labour mobility, workforce recruitment and retention, and integration within team-based care models.
In October 2025, the Ontario Ministry of Health directed hospitals to develop three-year plans to balance budgets without increases in operational funding. At a time when many hospitals are already facing persistent deficits, rising costs, and increasing demand, this directive added further pressure to an already strained system.
For S-LPs, audiologists, and communication health assistants, these pressures are not new. Workforce shortages and hiring constraints are already common across care settings, and further reductions risk destabilizing essential services across the continuum of care.
Recent analysis from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) underscores ongoing strain across Ontario hospitals, including pressures affecting training and future workforce supply. High clinical workloads are limiting clinicians’ ability to supervise students, reducing placement opportunities and clinical training capacity. As clinicians become increasingly stretched by staffing shortages and growing caseloads, the future supply of workforce-ready professionals may be at risk.
SAC member feedback further highlights how these pressures are affecting frontline care delivery. Clinicians describe working in overflow units originally intended as temporary pandemic measures but now operating as permanent fixtures, as well as transitional care and other repurposed spaces where staffing does not meet patient needs. Across settings, care is increasingly being delivered in hallways, multipurpose rooms, and other non-traditional clinical spaces due to ongoing capacity constraints.
Audiology services face additional challenges, as they are often viewed as transferable to community settings. In many regions, hospital-based audiology services have been significantly reduced or nearly eliminated, contributing to inequities in accessibility and affordability of community services.
These experiences reflect broader system-wide pressures. While the 2026 Ontario Budget emphasizes major investments in health infrastructure, operational funding has not kept pace with rising costs or service demand. This has created parallel pressures across the system, including underutilized beds in some areas due to staffing shortages and overextended clinicians in others. Together, these trends highlight a growing disconnect between capital investment and operational capacity.
SAC has a critical role to play in this environment. As hospitals respond to fiscal pressures with workforce reductions, we will continue to advocate for targeted investments and policy decisions that recognize communication health as essential, not optional components of safe, effective care. This includes ongoing engagement on health human resources planning and continued efforts to highlight the impact of staffing decisions across the system.
The Government of Ontario has announced an additional $30 million investment to expand the province’s primary care workforce as part of its broader Primary Care Action Plan.
While the announcement focuses on expanding nursing and physician assistant training, it also signals continued momentum toward comprehensive interprofessional primary care teams. As primary care models evolve to provide more coordinated and community-based services, there is greater opportunity to recognize the role of communication, swallowing, and balance health within these teams.
Although these health concerns are common in primary care, speech-language pathology and audiology services remain largely absent. Integrating S-LPs, audiologists, and communication health assistants into interprofessional primary care teams can enhance patient-centred care and support more coordinated service delivery. The clinical knowledge of our professions contributes to early identification, improved understanding of health information, and more comprehensive management of complex conditions.
As Ontario continues to invest in expanding primary care capacity, the structure and composition of these teams will remain important considerations for delivering holistic, accessible care across the province.
The federal Canada Student Loan Forgiveness Program is designed to help reduce workforce shortages in rural and remote communities by offering federal student loan forgiveness to eligible health and social service professionals. Although the government recently expanded the program to include ten additional occupations, speech-language pathologists (S-LPs) and audiologists were not included.
As highlighted in SAC’s recent consultation submission, this exclusion is a significant concern for our professions. S-LPs and audiologists provide essential diagnostic, therapeutic, and rehabilitative services. Failing to include our professions overlooks the serious and worsening shortages of S-LPs and audiologists in rural and remote areas, where access to communication, swallowing, balance, and hearing services is already limited.
The Ontario government’s Bill 56, Building a More Competitive Economy Act, 2025, received Royal Assent on November 3, advancing new labour mobility measures for regulated health professionals, building on Bill 2.
Under Bill 56, regulatory colleges will be required to process out-of-province applications within two business days once all criteria are met. Colleges will also be limited in requiring additional training or exams for applicants already licensed elsewhere in Canada, unless there is a clear public-protection reason to do so.
The legislation also includes a technical update aligning hearing aid dispensing rules with the new labour mobility framework. This update is intended to support out-of-province audiologists and physicians registering in Ontario and does not expand dispensing authority or change current audiology practice.
These measures aim to improve workforce mobility and reduce administrative delays for professionals relocating to Ontario. The changes are expected to take effect in early 2026, alongside the “as of right” certification process introduced under Bill 2.
SAC will continue to monitor the implementation of these changes and share updates as new regulations are developed.
With the Royal Assent of Bill 2, Protect Ontario Through Free Trade Within Canada Act, 2025, a streamlined “as of right” certification process will take effect on January 1, 2026. Certified professionals from other provinces and territories will be able to begin working in Ontario within 10 business days of credential review.
While this announcement primarily highlights non-health professions, SAC is monitoring developments for regulated health professions, including S-LPs and audiologists, and continues to advocate for workforce flexibility to improve access to care.
