‘I get to go home to my family:’ How one city is attracting new family doctors – CTV
October 08, 2025
In the struggle to recruit family physicians, the Vancouver Island community of Colwood, B.C., had hit rock bottom.
“Zero. That’s exactly the number of family doctors we had in Colwood,” said Mayor Doug Kobayashi. “That’s ridiculous for a city our size.”
Health care is a provincial responsibility, so when Kobayashi was elected in 2022, he inherited a serious problem without an obvious municipal solution. But after speaking with doctors, he believed there could be a way to get around that.
“We spent a lot of time in that first year just trying to figure out what the legalities were,” said Kobayashi. “I’ve had some former politicians tell me, ‘Oh, it’s against the Canada Health Act.’”
Turns out it’s not, and Kobayashi’s team in the Victoria suburb developed a first-of-its-kind model to offer family doctors better work-life balance and to take running a practice off their plate.
“They didn’t go to medical school to run a business,” Kobayashi said.
