Quinte West, a small town in southern Ontario, is offering $100,000 in financial incentives to doctors who agree to practice there for five years.

Meanwhile, the small Ontario town is one of many rural communities across the country currently offering cash incentives to doctors in hopes of attracting them for long-term practice.

For example, Newfoundland and Labrador established a $100,000 "Come Home" bonus for doctors who were born, educated, and trained in the province and then moved away, to come back and establish a clinic.

For his part, Dr. Fraser MacKay, New Brunswick representative at the Rural Doctors Association of Canada, said that 20 percent of Canadians live in rural areas, but only 9 percent of doctors work in rural areas.

MacKay also told CTV Your Morning on Wednesday that, compared to other countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Canada ranks near last in terms of the number of doctors per person and wait times for procedures.

Because there are very few doctors in rural Canada, those who work in rural areas can experience more pressure and stress compared to doctors in urban areas.

MacKay also added: "It's closer to being a general practitioner, with increasing closures in smaller hospitals and smaller departments, dwindling resources, and the ever-growing enormous administrative burden."

Doctors working in rural areas often face financial, ethical, and professional challenges if they want to take a leave or attend a conference, MacKay says, "because if you leave, you leave the community without a doctor as long as you are gone."

In 2021, the College of Family Physicians published the Rural Practice Roadmap, a guide for policymakers and healthcare workers to combat the shortage of practicing doctors in rural areas in Canada. The Rural Practice Roadmap focused on the need to recruit medical students from rural areas as well as train doctors from urban centers in rural areas.