Waiting Your Turn: Wait Times for Health Care in Canada, 2021 is a new study that finds Canada’s health-care wait times reached 25.6 weeks in 2021—the longest ever recorded—and 175 per cent higher than the 9.3 weeks Canadians waited in 1993, when the Fraser Institute began tracking medical wait times. Before this year, the longest recorded wait time was 22.6 weeks in 2020. Atlantic Canada has the longest wait times in the country this year, and Ontario recorded the shortest wait time, which was still more than four months long.

Less Ottawa, More Province, 2021: How Decentralized Federalism is Key to Health Care Reform is a new study that examines two of the most important ongoing public policy challenges facing Canada: the deterioration of government finances, and the comparative underperformance of our health care system. Fundamental reform of Canada’s health care system can be achieved by replicating changes made by the Chretien government in the 1990s when Ottawa removed strings to federal funding for welfare, providing the provinces with more autonomy and flexibility.

The Price of Public Health Care Insurance, 2021 finds that a typical Canadian family with an average household income of $150,177 will pay $15,039 for public health care this year, and that health-care costs have increased 177.6 per cent since 1997 compared to a 109.9 per cent increase in average incomes.