- Passport processing — service performance against the 30-day passport standard.
- CRA contact-centre wait — how long taxpayers wait to reach the CRA contact centre.
- Immigration processing times — how long IRCC takes against its own service standards.
- Veterans benefit backlog — wait times for veterans' disability-benefit decisions.
- Public service size — how much the federal public service grew over the past decade, and how fast.
Four views on the same underlying problem: share of patients past the surgical threshold, share past the specialist threshold, Canada's 32-year trend, and the within-Canada provincial spread for 2025. Toggle between them.
Commonwealth Fund 2023 patient survey, nine universal health-care systems (Fraser tabulation), plus the US as an unranked reference (CIHI tabulation of the same survey). Lower is better.
Canada's 58.3% is the highest of the nine — nearly triple the Netherlands (20.3%) and well above the nine-country average of 35.3%. One in five Canadian surgical patients waited a year or more.
Patient-reported shares past each threshold, ranked 1–9 (1 = best).
| Country | Waited >1 month for specialist | Rank | Waited 2+ months for elective surgery | Rank | Same/next-day appointment when sick | Rank |
|---|
Commonwealth Fund 2023 International Health Policy Survey of adults 18+, as tabulated in Fraser Institute, Comparing Performance of Universal Health Care Countries, 2025 (Table 5). Rank of 9; rank 1 = best. The "average" row is the mean of the nine ranked countries. The US answers the same survey but is excluded from the ranking as a non-universal system; its row is shown unranked for reference, computed from the CIHI tabulation of the same survey (same published-component basis — Canada cross-checks at 58.3%). The same/next-day column is Fraser's tabulation and is not republished by CIHI on an identical basis, so the US cell is left blank. See "What about the United States?" above. Fieldwork March–August 2023.
The median GP-referral-to-treatment wait rose from 9.3 weeks in 1993 to 28.6 weeks in 2025, a 208% increase. The deterioration accelerated after 2019 (20.9 weeks), with the pandemic-era backlog pushing waits to a record 30.0 weeks in 2024. The 2025 easing came entirely in the specialist-to-treatment segment (15.0 → 13.3 weeks); the wait just to see a specialist actually lengthened to 15.3 weeks.
Of nine universal health-care countries in the 2023 Commonwealth Fund survey, Canada reported the highest share waiting two months or more for elective surgery (58.3% vs the Netherlands' 20.3%), ranked 8th of 9 on specialist waits (65.2%), and dead last on same- or next-day access when sick (22.3%). Only Canada and the UK record year-plus waits at scale: 20% of Canadian surgical patients waited a year or more.
Canada ranked 3rd of 31 high-income universal systems for age-adjusted health spending as a share of GDP (11.6%, 2023), yet 27th of 30 for physicians and 25th of 30 for somatic-care beds per capita. Where you live matters too: Ontario's 2025 median wait was 19.2 weeks; New Brunswick's was 60.9. More than three times longer.
2025's 28.6 weeks is the second-worst reading on record. The 2024 peak (30.0 weeks) was historically extreme, and the 2025 number sits above every year between 1993 and 2023. The improvement was concentrated in the specialist-to-treatment segment; the wait to see a specialist actually lengthened to 15.3 weeks. Diagnostic queues also lengthened: 18.1 weeks for an MRI, 8.8 for a CT scan in 2025.
Canada had the highest share of patients waiting two months or more for elective surgery among nine universal systems in 2023 (58.3%), and its 2025 median wait was 28.6 weeks.
- Compared with
- The nine universal health-care systems in the Commonwealth Fund 2023 survey, as tabulated by the Fraser Institute, with the US shown unranked.
- Where Canada sits
- Ninth of nine universal systems on elective-surgery waits in 2023, at 58.3% against 20.3% in the Netherlands and a nine-country average of 35.3%. Canada was 8th of 9 on specialist waits.
- Which way it is moving
- Down. The median wait eased from a record 30.0 weeks in 2024 to 28.6 weeks in 2025, a small improvement. It is still the second-longest on record and 208% above the 9.3 weeks of 1993.
- What the verdict follows
- Position in the peer set. The 2025 easing is in Canada's own series, which the page keeps separate from the 2023 international snapshot, so the verdict reflects the peer position.
- Data basis
- Fraser Institute, Waiting Your Turn 2025 and Comparing Performance of Universal Health Care Countries 2025 (Table 5), tabulating the Commonwealth Fund 2023 International Health Policy Survey, fieldwork March–August 2023. Page last reviewed July 2026, data current to 2025, the latest published by the Fraser Institute, next release expected December 2026.
How each source measures "waiting"
- Fraser Institute, Waiting Your Turn: annual survey of specialist physicians across 12 specialties in 10 provinces (34th edition in 2025; 1,577 responses, 13% response rate). Reports the median expected wait in weeks in two segments: GP referral → specialist consultation (15.3 weeks in 2025) and consultation → treatment (13.3 weeks). Excludes emergency care. Physician-reported, not administrative data.
- Commonwealth Fund International Health Policy Survey (2023): random samples of adults 18+ in 10 countries (21,341 respondents; fieldwork March–August 2023). Reports the share of patients who waited past thresholds (more than one month for a specialist appointment, two months or more for elective surgery), plus same/next-day and after-hours access. Patient-reported.
- Fraser Institute, Comparing Performance of Universal Health Care Countries, 2025: tabulates the Commonwealth Fund 2023 access indicators for the nine surveyed countries with universal systems (Table 5), alongside OECD spending and resource data.
Why the chart views are kept separate, not merged into one ranking
The Canadian trend is a median measured in weeks from a physician survey; the international comparison is a percentage-over-threshold from a patient survey. The two cannot be converted into each other, the respondents differ, and the vintages differ (2025 vs 2023). The 2023 international snapshot also pre-dates Canada's 2024 peak of 30.0 weeks, so it likely understates Canada's relative position at the worst of the backlog.
The 13% physician response rate, and thin cells in small provinces such as PEI's 12 responses, mean provincial medians should be read as indicative. Fraser notes the results may overestimate or underestimate true waits. Survey wording for the Commonwealth Fund's same/next-day question changed in 2023 to include phone and video appointments, so that column is not comparable with earlier survey waves.
Specialty-level context from the 2025 Fraser survey: the longest total waits were neurosurgery (49.9 weeks), orthopaedic surgery (48.6), and otolaryngology (43.8); the shortest were radiation oncology (4.2) and medical oncology (4.7). Diagnostic imaging waits also lengthened: 18.1 weeks for an MRI, 8.8 for a CT scan.
Primary sources
Fraser Institute figures, tables, and tabulations on this page are reproduced with the permission of the Fraser Institute.
- Fraser Institute: Waiting Your Turn — Wait Times for Health Care in Canada, 2025 Report (PDF)
- Fraser Institute: Waiting Your Turn 2025 (study page)
- Fraser Institute: Comparing Performance of Universal Health Care Countries, 2025 (PDF)
- Commonwealth Fund: Mirror, Mirror 2024 (Blumenthal et al.) — underlying 2023 IHP survey data
- CIHI: Commonwealth Fund survey, 2023 — Canadian results
- CIHI: How Canada Compares — CMWF 2023 data tables (XLSX) — Q15 (specialist wait) and Q17 (elective-surgery wait) distributions for all 10 countries; source of the unranked US reference figures (spec 40.1% = 24.1+14.4+1.6; surg 25.8% = 21.0+4.8).
- The Health Foundation: Feeling the pressure — the 2023 Commonwealth Fund survey (Aug 2024)
- Fraser Institute news release: Canada's median wait hits 28.6 weeks (Dec 2025)
