By Mackenzie Moir and Bacchus Barua with Hani Wannamaker
Waiting for treatment has become a defining characteristic of Canadian health care. In order to document the queues for visits to specialists and for diagnostic and surgical procedures in the country, the Fraser Institute has—for almost three decades—surveyed specialist physicians across 12 specialties and 10 provinces. This edition of Waiting Your Turn indicates that, overall, waiting times for medically necessary treatment have increased since last year. Specialist physicians surveyed report a median waiting time of 27.7 weeks between referral from a general practitioner and receipt of treatment—longer than the wait of 27.4 weeks reported in 2022. This year’s wait time is the longest wait time recorded in this survey’s history and is 198% longer than in 1993, when it was just 9.3 weeks.
