Canada scores low for healthcare resources

VANCOUVER – Despite a relatively high level of spending, Canada has significantly fewer doctors, hospital beds, MRI machines and CT scanners compared to other countries with universal healthcare, finds a new study from the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank.

“There’s a clear imbalance between the high cost of Canada’s healthcare system and the actual care Canadians receive in return,” said Mackenzie Moir (pictured), senior policy analyst at the Fraser Institute and author of Comparing Performance of Universal Health-Care Countries, 2025.

In 2023, the latest year of available comparable data, Canada spent more on healthcare (as a percentage of the economy/GDP, after adjusting for population age) than most other high-income countries with universal healthcare (ranking 3rd out of 31 countries, which include the United Kingdom, Australia and the Netherlands).

And yet, Canada ranked 27th (of 30 countries) for the availability of doctors and 25th (of 30) for the availability of hospital beds.

In 2022, the latest year of diagnostic technology data, Canada ranked 27th (of 31 countries) for the availability of MRI machines and 28th (of 31) for CT scanners.

And in 2023, among the nine countries with universal healthcare systems included in the Commonwealth Fund’s International Health Policy Survey, Canada ranked last for the percentage of patients able to make same- or next-day appointments when sick (22 percent) and had the highest percentage of patients (58 percent) who waited two months or more for non-emergency surgery.

For comparison, the Netherlands had much higher rates of same- or next-day appointments (47 percent) and much lower waits of two months or more for non-emergency surgery (20 percent).

“To improve healthcare for Canadians, our policymakers should learn from other countries around the world with higher-performing universal health-care systems,” said Nadeem Esmail, director of health policy at the Fraser Institute.

About The Fraser Institute
The Fraser Institute is an independent Canadian public policy research and educational organization with offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, and Montreal and ties to a global network of think-tanks in 87 countries. Its mission is to improve the quality of life for Canadians, their families and future generations by studying, measuring and broadly communicating the effects of government policies, entrepreneurship and choice on their well-being. To protect the Institute’s independence, it does not accept grants from governments or contracts for research. Visit www.fraserinstitute.org.