Canada is facing a growing maternal care crisis, marked by rising mortality rates among mothers as well as high infant mortality rates compared to other comparable countries, a new study suggests.
The report from SecondStreet.org found that Canada’s maternal mortality rate has risen 43 percent over the past two decades, and infant outcomes lag behind many comparable countries.
An emergency room physician who works at three Toronto hospitals is raising alarm bells over the capacity of some ERs in the city, calling the volume of patients “insane, out-of-control, explosive, never seen before, [and] record-breaking.”
Dr. Raghu Venugopal has worked in emergency rooms for 19 years and said if you ask any ER doctor right now, they would say the current situation concerning.
The number one issue, Venugopal suggested, is that people don’t have other access treatment.
To understand modern Sweden and how the country has transformed, consider Jens Eriksson’s career trajectory.
In his youth, Mr. Eriksson worked at music labels such as Stockholm Records, repping Swedish bands like the Cardigans around the world. Thirty years later, the arts aficionado runs a network of private health care clinics, a job he took after running a network of private schools – all in a high-tax, socialist country.
He admits he was an unlikely candidate for this leap. His own kids went to public school, and he had, too. But Mr. Eriksson’s evolution, like his country’s, was borne out of necessity. And it’s a path that provides Canadians with rather significant insights.
Half of Canadians have avoided seeking medical attention because of long wait times, while an overwhelming majority believe the country’s healthcare system needs major changes, according to a new national poll.
The survey, released Thursday by the Montreal Economic Institute (MEI), SecondStreet.org and the Canadian Constitution Foundation, found 50% of Canadians have avoided visiting a doctor or hospital because of delays in accessing care.
Canada spends the second-highest share of its economy on health care among 32 countries with universal or systems, yet ranks near the bottom for the availability of doctors, hospital beds, and much of its medical technology, according to a recent study.
The study, conducted by the Fraser Institute, examines how Canada compares with other high-income countries in health-care spending, resource availability, and access to medical services.
Wait times for most of the province’s publicly funded priority surgeries and procedures have increased between 2017 and 2025, according to a study released Monday.
MRI scans, cataract surgeries and all cancer surgeries are among eight priority procedures that saw increased wait times during the period, out of a total of 12, according to the study published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).
“It’s deeply alarming that so much money has been spent on for-profit surgeries and, yet, we don’t have the results to show what Ontarians are getting for those dollars,” said Andrew Longhurst, senior researcher at the centre.
I bet people abandoned OHIP in such numbers the private system is overwhelmed.
And what role does dumping the 3rd World into the mix have to do with this?
Sweden and Canada operate publicly financed universal health-care systems, but access to care in the Nordic country is “markedly better,” according to a new report from the Fraser Institute.
In 2024, wait times leading to unmet medical needs affected two per cent of Swedes, compared with 9.1 per cent of Canadians, says the report’s author, Yanick Labrie.
When I woke up one morning in early July, I had no idea that day would end with me parked in a hospital bed in a hallway at Royal University Hospital (RUH) in Saskatoon, hearing the screams of other patients.
Of course, I had heard stories about the decline of health care and wait times in hospitals in Canada and in Saskatchewan. Stories about people spending days waiting for care in hospital hallways seemed unreal most of the time, because they weren’t happening to me — that is, until it was.
We are dying as a people and a state.
“Canadians have only access to eighteen per cent of all innovative medicines that are available around the world. Americans have access to over 90 per cent,” explains Dr. Bettina Hamelin, President and CEO of Innovative Medicines Canada, which represents Canadian pharmaceutical companies.
“Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, which are the richer countries in this world, have access to about 28 per cent [of innovative medicines]”, Hamelin says from her Toronto office, explaining that the big problems are time and money.
Many Canadians have not-so-fond memories of their hospital experiences, suggests a new study that found nearly half of online hospital reviews analyzed involved negative feedback.
A random sample of 1,000 Google review comments involving Canadian acute care hospitals from 2017 to 2022 found people were more likely to leave negative (47.9 per cent) than mixed (19.8 per cent) or positive (32.3 per cent) reviews.
Only half?
Imagine waking up in a hospital bed and being told by a doctor that you are well enough to leave, only to discover you cannot. Not because you want to stay, but because there is nowhere safe for you to go. No home-care support, no rehabilitation space, no long-term care bed.
This is unfortunately the daily reality for thousands of Canadians.
With the rise in popularity of the Democratic Socialist movement in the United States, one of the promises made to voters is “free healthcare.” Advocates frame healthcare as a human right, pointing north to Canada as the example of universal coverage.
The slogan is simple, powerful, and politically effective: Canadians enjoy free healthcare. The belief that Canadian healthcare is free stems from the fact that Canadians do not pay at the point of service. Yet the question remains: Is it truly free, and what does “free” actually mean?
OTTAWA — While Canadians like boasting of their “free health care,” a new report shows hidden tax bills related to Canada’s struggling medical system are climbing faster than household earnings.
Released this week by the Fraser Institute, the study entitled The Price of Public Health Care Insurance, 2026 shows the average Canadian family of four earning an average household income of $202,885 will spend an estimated $21,115 in health-care costs.
Dr. Kaitlin Stockton has watched far too many patients suffer in overflowing emergency departments.
The Vancouver-based physician has given patients she just met a cancer diagnosis, with little privacy in the middle of a noisy room. She’s cared for a man with an intracranial brain bleed on an ambulance stretcher in a hallway. And she can’t shake the memory of one patient who had septic shock after spending eight hours in a waiting room, dangerously close to death.
Mass Immigration’s strain on limited resources is never mentioned of course.
The Canadian Institute for Health Information has released its annual report on emergency department wait times, a litany of data that is as mind-numbing as it is depressing.
One in 10 people who head to their local ED wait more than 14 hours for care. For the sickest of the sick, those who need to be admitted to hospital, the waits are three times longer. One in 10 wait more than 48 hours, languishing on stretchers in hospital hallways. Individually, it can be much worse, like the 79-year-old man in Edmonton with severe influenza, who waited 90 hours for a bed.
