“Healthcare”

Six days in an overflow stretcher. Beds in storage rooms. Patients dying in their seats.

No, we’re not describing an episode of HBO’s gritty medical drama The Pitt. These are real-life scenes playing out in Canada’s emergency rooms.

From Carbonear, N.L., where a man recently died of a heart attack during a 10-hour wait to see a doctor, to Calgary, where a woman pleaded “please don’t let me die” during the hours she bled onto a stretcher in the ER, hospitals are bursting at the seams as backlogs and access issues affect patient flow.

Prolonged wait times for surgery and medical care cost Canadian patients more than $4.2 billion in lost wages and reduced productivity last year, a new study suggests.

The 1.4 million Canadians who waited for medically necessary treatment in 2025 lost an estimated $3,043 each due to reduced wages and decreased productivity at work, according to a March 10 report from the Fraser Institute.

Dr. Alecs Chochinov recently received a private message from an emergency medicine colleague who has been practising for more than a decade. “I’ve never been so despondent,” it said.

“That single doctor is speaking for many,” Chochinov said. “People are despondent. They’re scared that there are going to be bad outcomes and they’re going to feel responsible. But they don’t see any respite.”

Health care was looking grimmer by the day back in 2023 in a rural corner of western Canada.

Family doctors had retired or moved, starting a chain reaction that cut in half the number serving the 12,000 residents of the Alberta town of Stettler and its surrounding county, also called Stettler.

People with preventable problems, but without family doctors, sought help in the town hospital’s emergency room. Then the emergency room began shutting down on some days because of a doctor shortage, forcing the unlucky to drive 50 miles to the nearest city.

About 450 people came to a hastily called meeting at the hockey arena.

Eight out of 10 provinces do not require health-care providers to inform patients about expected or maximum recommended wait times for surgery, a new report says, noting Canadians continue to face long wait times.

“Every year, thousands of patients die while waiting for treatment in Canada,” said the report, titled “All Provinces Need Greater Transparency Around Life-Saving Surgery,” published on Feb. 19 by think tank SecondStreet.org.

Tommy Douglas, not dead enough. https://t.co/0O54m10VKn

— Katewerk (@katewerk) February 20, 2026

Canada’s health-care system is facing a worsening crisis, with half of Canadians reporting they either don’t have a family doctor or struggle to see the one they have, according to new data from the Angus Reid Institute.

The survey highlights a decade-long decline in access.

Last week, in a story about the Doug Ford government’s plan to increase the number of private clinics and reduce wait times in Ontario, one Toronto-based doctor told CTV News that Ontario’s health-care system is in “remarkably good shape.”

According to the Progressive Conservative government, nearly a quarter of children in Ontario wait too long for general pediatric care. All children wait four months (on average) for “non-urgent” treatment, compared to the government’s ridiculously long target of no more than six months. Crucially, this is only after they first wait weeks or months to see a specialist or for any diagnostics (e.g. an MRI).

Over 100,000 Canadians sought medical care outside of the country last year as Liberals continue to prioritize assisted suicide over actual health care, according to a new report.

On January 13, the Fraser Institute published results from a survey of physicians across Canada, which found that 105,529 Canadians sought healthcare outside the country, amid month-long wait times to receive care in Canada.

When something ridiculous or scandalous happens in Edmonton, where I live, I make a point of calling attention to it, perhaps out of a misguided sense of professional honour. The city has now come to nationwide and even international attention for a reason that hits particularly close. A few days before Christmas, a 44-year-old man in good general health, Prashant Sreekumar, turned up at the Grey Nuns hospital with terrible chest pains that had begun at work.

About 70 percent of Ontarians report waiting longer than three months to see a specialist or have a diagnostic test, according to a new survey.

he survey, conducted by Abacus Data, found that 70 percent of Ontario residents said they or someone they know had waited longer than three months to see a specialist or receive diagnostic care, including one-third who waited longer than six months.

The Ontario PC government recently announced public funding will be used at four private health clinics for hip and knee replacements. There will be $125 million set aside over two years to pay for an estimated 20,000 orthopedic surgeries at Academic Orthopedic Surgical Associates of Ottawa, Richmond Hill’s Schroeder Ambulatory Centre, Toronto’s OV Surgical Centre and Windsor Orthopedic Surgical Centre.