More than 105,000 Canadians leaving the country for medical treatment in a single year should stop us in our tracks. This is not a fringe phenomenon or a handful of wealthy patients seeking luxury care abroad. It is a quiet but growing referendum on the state of Canada’s health-care system and the results are uncomfortable.
According to a new report from the Fraser Institute, an estimated 105,529 Canadians sought non-emergency medical treatment outside the country in 2025. That number, based on surveys of specialists across 12 major fields, is likely an underestimate. Patients who bypassed specialists entirely or made their own arrangements abroad are largely invisible in the data. In other words, the real number could be significantly higher.
For decades, Canadians have been told that long wait times are an unfortunate but acceptable trade-off for a publicly funded, universal system. Yet the scale of this medical migration suggests that many patients no longer see waiting as benign or acceptable.
The reasons people leave are not hard to understand. The report notes that patients can expect to wait an average of 13.3 weeks for medically necessary treatment after seeing a specialist. Physicians themselves consider a “reasonable” wait to be 8.8 weeks. That gap of nearly five weeks is not just an inconvenience; for many conditions, it can mean worsening symptoms, increased pain, complications, or permanent loss of function.
Urology alone accounted for more than 12,000 patients seeking care abroad. General surgery followed with over 10,000, and internal medicine with more than 8,300. These are not exotic or experimental treatments they are core medical services that a functioning health-care system should be able to provide in a timely manner.
Geographically, the problem is widespread. Ontario saw more than 51,000 residents leave the country for care, followed by British Columbia and Alberta. This is not a localized failure; it is a national one.
What makes this situation even more troubling is that it exists alongside massive wait lists at home. A separate report from SecondStreet.org estimates that nearly six million Canadians are currently waiting for surgery, diagnostic scans, or specialist appointments roughly one in eight people. Even more alarming, the think tank estimates that more than 23,000 Canadians died while on a healthcare wait list in the 2024–2025 fiscal year.
These are not abstract statistics. They represent parents waiting for surgery, seniors waiting for scans, and workers waiting for treatment that would allow them to return to normal life. For those who can afford it, traveling abroad becomes a rational if painful choice. For those who cannot, waiting is often the only option, regardless of the consequences.
Supporters of the current system often argue that private or foreign care undermines public health care. But the reality is that the system is already being undermined by delays, shortages, and a lack of capacity. When tens of thousands of patients are willing to leave the country and pay out of pocket to escape those failings, it speaks volumes about how well the system is serving them.
This is not an argument against universal health care. It is an argument against complacency. A system built on fairness loses its moral authority when access depends on patience, luck, or the ability to leave the country altogether.
Canadians deserve better than a choice between waiting and leaving. Until meaningful reforms address capacity, efficiency, and accountability, patients will continue to vote with their feet and the numbers will keep rising.
