Canadians continue to face lengthy delays for medically necessary health care, with patients waiting more than six months on average from a family doctor referral to treatment, according to a new national study, a reality experts say has become the defining feature of the country’s health-care system.
The Fraser Institute’s Waiting Your Turn: Wait Times for Health Care in Canada, 2025 report found that in 2025, Canadian patients waited a median of 28.6 weeks between a general practitioner referral and receiving treatment. While that marks a slight improvement from 30.0 weeks in 2024, it remains the second-longest wait time ever recorded in the study’s 34-year history.
“Remarkably long wait times for medically necessary care have become the defining characteristic of the Canadian health care experience,” said Nadeem Esmail in a release. Esmail is the director of health policy studies at the Fraser Institute and co-author of the report.
The annual survey, based on physician responses across 10 provinces and 12 medical specialties, shows wait times are now 208 per cent longer than they were in 1993, when patients waited a median of just 9.3 weeks.
How Manitoba compares
While Manitoba was not among the provinces with the shortest overall wait times, the province performed comparatively well in the second stage of care, the time between seeing a specialist and receiving treatment.
Manitoba recorded a median specialist-to-treatment wait of 15.7 weeks, placing it among the shorter waits nationally. Only Ontario (8.5 weeks) and British Columbia (12.4 weeks) reported faster access during that phase.
However, like most provinces, Manitobans continue to face delays earlier in the system. Nationally, the time between referral by a family doctor and consultation with a specialist rose slightly in 2025 to 15.3 weeks, continuing a long-term upward trend.
Wide provincial gaps
The report highlights significant disparities across the country.
Ontario recorded the shortest overall median wait at 19.2 weeks, while New Brunswick reported the longest at 60.9 weeks. Prince Edward Island (49.7 weeks) and Nova Scotia (49.0 weeks) also saw patients waiting close to a full year for care.
Across Canada, an estimated 1.4 million patients were waiting for medically necessary procedures in 2025.
Long delays by specialty
Wait times varied sharply depending on the type of care patients needed.
Nationally, patients waited longest for neurosurgery (49.9 weeks) and orthopaedic surgery (48.6 weeks), procedures often linked to chronic pain, mobility loss, and diminished quality of life. In contrast, wait times were significantly shorter for radiation oncology (4.2 weeks) and medical oncology (4.7 weeks).
Even after seeing a specialist, Canadians waited an average of 4.5 weeks longer than what physicians consider clinically reasonable.
“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,” said Mackenzie Moir, senior policy analyst at the Fraser Institute and co-author of the study.
Diagnostic bottlenecks persist
The report also points to continued delays for diagnostic imaging, a critical step in diagnosis and treatment planning.
In 2025, patients waited a median of 8.8 weeks for CT scans, 18.1 weeks for MRI scans, and 5.4 weeks for ultrasounds. MRI waits were among the longest, with some provinces reporting delays of several months.
