“Healthcare Crisis”

Last week, in a story about the Doug Ford government’s plan to increase the number of private clinics and reduce wait times in Ontario, one Toronto-based doctor told CTV News that Ontario’s health-care system is in “remarkably good shape.”

According to the Progressive Conservative government, nearly a quarter of children in Ontario wait too long for general pediatric care. All children wait four months (on average) for “non-urgent” treatment, compared to the government’s ridiculously long target of no more than six months. Crucially, this is only after they first wait weeks or months to see a specialist or for any diagnostics (e.g. an MRI).

Over 100,000 Canadians sought medical care outside of the country last year as Liberals continue to prioritize assisted suicide over actual health care, according to a new report.

On January 13, the Fraser Institute published results from a survey of physicians across Canada, which found that 105,529 Canadians sought healthcare outside the country, amid month-long wait times to receive care in Canada.

When something ridiculous or scandalous happens in Edmonton, where I live, I make a point of calling attention to it, perhaps out of a misguided sense of professional honour. The city has now come to nationwide and even international attention for a reason that hits particularly close. A few days before Christmas, a 44-year-old man in good general health, Prashant Sreekumar, turned up at the Grey Nuns hospital with terrible chest pains that had begun at work.

About 70 percent of Ontarians report waiting longer than three months to see a specialist or have a diagnostic test, according to a new survey.

he survey, conducted by Abacus Data, found that 70 percent of Ontario residents said they or someone they know had waited longer than three months to see a specialist or receive diagnostic care, including one-third who waited longer than six months.

The Ontario PC government recently announced public funding will be used at four private health clinics for hip and knee replacements. There will be $125 million set aside over two years to pay for an estimated 20,000 orthopedic surgeries at Academic Orthopedic Surgical Associates of Ottawa, Richmond Hill’s Schroeder Ambulatory Centre, Toronto’s OV Surgical Centre and Windsor Orthopedic Surgical Centre.

Waiting for the medical care Canadians need has become the national pastime. But unlike America’s pastime — baseball — hanging around for the care you need is not a good way to spend a sunny, summer afternoon even if your have hotdogs and beer.

Enough Canadians to fill up a small city like Lethbridge, AB, or Kamloops, BC, have died on medical waitlists over the past six years.

And yet, governments don’t seem to care enough to actively track the problem.

One in five Canadians say they do not have a family doctor and face health-care challenges as a result, according to a recent survey.

The survey, conducted by Angus Reid in collaboration with the Canadian Cancer Society was released on Nov. 28.

The survey also found that many Canadians who do have a family doctor report it is difficult to get an appointment, waiting at least a week or more to be seen. Survey authors say that is because doctors are taking on too much.

Canadian health care as an idea, and Canadian health care as an institution, exist in two different universes.

Notionally, health care in Canada is single-payer, universal and egalitarian. No one can jump the line. No one can buy better or faster care. Everyone has reasonably timely access to primary and specialist care, and critical issues are treated as true medical emergencies.

A new report is raising alarm over growing wait-list deaths in Canada.

The report from public policy think tank SecondStreet.org revealed that at least 23,746 patients died in Canada while waiting for surgeries or diagnostic procedures between April 2024 and March 2025.

The figures are a three per cent increase from the previous year and push the total number of reported wait-list deaths since 2018 to more than 100,000.

Well so long as some 3rd World flotsam got superior care to a Canadian citizen then I guess that’s all right.

h/t Mauser

About a half a million Canadians left emergency departments before being seen by a doctor in 2024, according to a data analysis by CBC’s Marketplace.

And because B.C. and Quebec report these figures based on the fiscal calendar (and include parts of 2025), that number is likely a lot higher.

The 2024 statistics collected from most provinces and territories show Prince Edward Island had the highest percentage of people leaving, at roughly 14 per cent.

Nearly six in 10 Canadians support reform of the country’s public health-care system, including use of private clinics when patients face delays in receiving timely care, a new survey suggests.

Think tank SecondStreet.org, in partnership with Leger, polled more than 1,600 adults nationwide on five health-care reform options, based on the experiences of other “better-performing” universal health-care systems around the world, including those in Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, France, Australia, Germany, and Japan, said the report detailing the findings.