Over 105,000 patients left Canada for health-care treatments in other countries in 2025

Most Canadians have or know someone who has had a months-long wait for health-care treatment due to an overwhelmed provincial health-care system. The delays in health care have become so bad that a growing number of  Canadians are giving up on growing wait times by flying to other countries for prompt medical care. An estimated 105,529 Canadian patients traveled outside of Canada for health-care treatments in 2025, a new report by the Fraser Institute found. Out of all the medical treatment performed on Canadians last year, approximately 2.1 percent of procedures were performed abroad by foreign medical practitioners. The estimated number of patients traveling outside of the country for health care jumped by 66 percent in the last decade, when the last calculation was made. Nadeem Esmail, Fraser Institute director of health policy and co-author of the report, told The Hub the findings are further evidence that the current universal access health-care system isn’t working well for many Canadians. “Why do Canadians have to leave Canada to receive this health care when they should be able to purchase it in their own home country, just as the Swedes or Norwegians or anybody in Europe, or Australians or New Zealanders can do?” Esmail said. “These are Canadians paying twice for health care,” Esmail added. “They’ve already paid their taxes for their universal access health-care system, and now they’re paying again by getting health care in another country, on top of the cost of travel, which speaks volumes about how well the system is working for them.” While the study did not determine which countries Canadians travelled to for procedures elsewhere, a 2024 Ipsos poll found 42 percent of Canadians surveyed would go to the U.S. for health care and pay for it if needed. The reasons Canadians chose to opt out of their provincial health-care systems cited in the report ranged from concerns about quality, lack of local procedures or equipment, seeking more advanced health-care facilities and cutting-edge medical technologies for better outcomes, and to avoid negative medical consequences of waiting for treatment in Canada, as health-care wait times have skyrocketed in the last several years. The latest report factored in the Fraser Institute’s Waiting Your Turn annual research study, which found Canadians receiving surgeries and other medical procedures in Canada waited a median time of 28.6 weeks to get treatment in 2025. Urologists saw the highest percentage of patients going abroad for treatment at 3.7 percent (or 12,697 patients). This included treatments for the bladder, prostate, kidney, uterus, and urethra. Approximately 3.2 percent of Canadians needing plastic surgeons received the treatment outside the country. For those needing to see a gynaecologist, it was 3 percent. For patients wanting to see a radiation oncologist, it was 2.7 percent. Health care and medical tourism has been popular with Canadians for decades, but it has increased as wait times in Canada climbed in the last decade. Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, had an estimated 51,538 patients seek treatment outside Canada. B.C. came in second at 25,698 patients. In third came Alberta, with 13,919 patients seeking treatment beyond our borders. Quebec had a remarkably low number of patients leaving Canada for treatment, at only an estimated 6,285 Quebecers. The Fraser Institute report on Canadians going abroad used data from the federally-funded Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), which tallies the numbers of procedures performed in Canada, along with doctors’ surveys on the percentage of their patients leaving the country for treatment. The data in the research only included Canadians leaving after already seeing a specialist in Canada, but stuck waiting for further treatment—accounting for half the wait times in the country. Given that the study does not account for Canadians who immediately sought specialist care internationally after seeing a general practitioner, the calculation is likely a significant underestimate.