In 2025, Canadian patients faced a median wait of 28.6 weeks from GP referral to treatment — down from the record 30.0 weeks in 2024, but still the second-longest ever recorded and 208% longer than the 9.3 weeks of 1993 (Fraser Institute, Waiting Your Turn). Internationally, the 2023 Commonwealth Fund survey of nine universal health-care systems found Canada reported the highest share of patients waiting two months or more for elective surgery (58.3%) and ranked last for same- or next-day access when sick.
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). 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%.
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.
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 — meaning it likely understates Canada's relative position at the worst of the backlog.
The 13% physician response rate (and thin cells in small provinces — PEI had 12 responses) means 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.
Fraser Institute figures, tables, and tabulations on this page are reproduced with the permission of the Fraser Institute.