Dear John,

I’m happy to report that despite all the challenges this year presented us with, the Fraser Institute continued its ongoing measurement and surveying of Canada’s health-care system.

What I’m much less happy to report is that the state of Canada’s health-care system is… not great.

In August, we released a study informing Canadians of how much our “free” health care actually costs.

It turns out that a typical Canadian family will actually pay $14,474 for public health care this year through various taxes. The average individual can expect to pay $4,894.

In November, we used a “value for money approach” to compare the cost and performance of 28 universal health-care systems in high-income countries. The study measured availability of resources, use of resources, access to resources, and quality and clinical performance.

It found that while Canada spends more on health care than the majority of other countries, our system routinely delivers sub-par results compared to our international peers.

We ranked second-last for acute care beds, and third-last for the number of physicians available. 30% of Canadian patients reported waiting for two months or longer for an appointment with a specialist compared with only 3% in Germany, 4% in France and 7% in the Netherlands. 18% of patients in Canada reported waiting four months or longer for elective surgery compared to 7% in Switzerland and 0% (yes, zero) in Germany.

Just a couple weeks ago, we released the results of our yearly Waiting your turn survey.

This year's results? Canadian patients waited longer than ever for medical treatment this year: a median wait time of 22.6 weeks.

That's 143% higher than the 9.3 weeks Canadians waited in 1993, when national estimates of the wait for medically necessary elective treatments were first calculated!

While this year’s reported wait times have been undoubtedly influenced by the ongoing pandemic, historical data suggests they are also the result of decades of policy inertia.

Together, these studies garnered widespread media coverage right across the country, fueled discussion and debate among our leaders, and reached millions of Canadians on social media.

That’s what we do here at the Fraser Institute – we provide Canadians with the quality research they need to hold their governments accountable.

We move the needle of Canadian public policy debates with peer-reviewed studies and thoughtful commentaries.

John, as you know, health care is just one of the many policy areas we cover.

If you support our efforts, I’d like to ask you to make a donation so we can continue. As you might imagine, we don’t accept government funding. We rely entirely on supporters like you.

Thank you for your support of our work. From myself and the entire Fraser Institute family – Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and happy new year.

Stay safe,

Niels Veldhuis
President