Health For a nation that will have spent an estimated 12.7 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product on health care in 2025 ($399 billion, or $9,625 per Canadian – a record), it seems incongruous that patients in Atlantic Canada should have to wait two to three times longer for treatment by a specialist after referral by their general practitioner than the nation as a whole. But, according to Waiting Your Turn 2025 released in December 2025, the Fraser Institute’s most recent update of health-care wait times across Canada, inequities – some of them pretty wild – continue to plague Canada’s distribution of health services across geographic areas and generational divides. As the survey shows: it takes a median 60.9 weeks for a patient in New Brunswick to be treated by a specialist after being referred by his or her general practitioner. In Prince Edward Island, that span covers 50 weeks; in Nova Scotia, 49; and in Newfoundland, 43.5. Yet the national median is 28.6 weeks: in Ontario, 19.2; in British Columbia, 32.2; in Quebec, 32.5; in Saskatchewan, 34.8; in Alberta, 36 and, in Manitoba, 39.1 weeks. (Wait times in the report are calculated as median, not average numbers. The “median” is the mid-point in any given set of numbers – half above and half below. In averaging, even one or two extraordinary outliers can distort the apparent value of all others.) According to the same institute’s annual survey, the national median of 28.6 weeks is the second-longest wait time ever recorded, shorter than last year’s 30 weeks, but longer than the 20.9 weeks in 2019 (before the pandemic). It’s 208 per cent longer than the 9.3 weeks in 1993, when the institute began publishing wait times. Said Nadeem Esmail, director of health policy studies at the Fraser Institute and co-author of the report: “Remarkably long waits for medically necessary care have become the defining characteristic of the Canadian health experience.” And co-author Mackenzie Moir, senior policy analyst at the institute added, “Long wait times can result in increased suffering for patients, lost productivity at work, decreased quality of life and, in the worst cases, disability or death.” CANADA’S HEALTH-CARE CONUNDRUM: Waiting Longer. Spending More. Image courtesy of The Fraser Institute 36 | www.snowbirds.org
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