Dear John,

I’m Bacchus Barua, the Director of Health Policy Studies here at the Fraser Institute.

Our mission is simple: to measure the performance of our health care system and explore ways to offer better universal health care for all Canadians.

Last week, you may have seen the most recent edition of our annual Waiting Your Turn study, which measures wait times across the country.

This year, physicians report a median wait time of nearly 28 weeks between a referral from a general practitioner and receipt of treatment.

This is the longest delay ever recorded, and is 198% longer than the 9.3 weeks Canadian patients could expect to wait in 1993 when we first began measuring this data.

The study also estimates that there were 1.2 million procedures for which patients were waiting in 2023.

John, if you have been on our email list for a while, you’ll know that Canada’s health care system underperforming is not exactly breaking news.

And this is not due to inadequate funding.

In 2021, Canada ranked amongst the most expensive universal health care systems in the world. However, despite our high spending, we consistently underperform on key measures of availability of medical resources (such as doctors and beds) and timely access to care.

And yet - there is reason for optimism!

More Canadians than ever are open to badly needed reforms. A recent poll found that a strong majority of Canadians finally seem to understand that there are structural problems that won’t be solved by simply throwing money at a broken system.

This shift in public opinion is largely thanks to the work we do here at the Fraser Institute.

Our health care studies dominated headlines in newspapers from coast to coast this year. Our team appeared on countless TV and radio interviews; hundreds of thousands of people read our studies on our website; and our work reached millions more on social media.

Clearly, there is still much work to be done. But I’ve never been more proud of the work we have produced - we are clearly making a difference!

We of course don’t accept government funding to produce our research. We rely entirely on the generosity of supporters like you.

If you value the work we do, and believe that all Canadians deserve a better universal health care system, I’d like to ask you to consider making a donation to the Fraser Institute today.

Thank you so much for your continued support.

From all of us here at the Fraser Institute, Happy Holidays!

Sincerely,

Bacchus Barua
Director, Health Policy Studies
The Fraser Institute