A Fraser Institute study released on Tuesday showed the financial impact of long wait times for surgery and treatment in Canada’s health-care system.

The study showed that an estimated 1.4 million people were waiting for necessary treatment, costing $4.2 billion in lost wages and productivity.

“Canadians waiting for health care aren’t just waiting for care or deteriorating medically or risking a poor outcome from treatment when they finally get the treatment they need,” Nadeem Esmail, director of health policy studies at the Fraser Institute, said.

“They’re losing productivity at work, time with friends and family, with their children, with their grandchildren.”

The study used data from the Fraser Institute’s annual Waiting Your Turn survey of Canadian physicians who, in 2025, reported the national median waiting time from specialist appointment to treatment was 13.3 weeks.

“Canadians are paying twice for health care. They’re paying through their tax dollars for the health care system that fails to deliver the timely health care, and then they’re paying with their own time, with their productivity, with their lost work while they’re waiting for that health care that is being delayed,” he said.

The $4.2 billion in lost wages is considered “conservative” as it doesn’t take into account the 15.3-week wait to see a specialist, or the wait for diagnostic testing. The total median wait time in Canada for medical treatment was 28.6 weeks in 2025 which is the second-longest in the survey’s history.

“We certainly know and understand that when individuals are waiting for health care, they are risking adverse medical events, consequences from the deteriorating condition, ” he added.

“They are facing the prospect of more complex treatments and poor outcomes at the end, and that will have a cost to the health-care system as well.”

Rayanne Boychuk is one of those 1.4 million people waiting to see a specialist. The Edmonton-area woman was diagnosed with Graves’ disease 15 years ago. She’s undergone a number of procedures since then and recently started feeling ill again after an allergic reaction.

“I started getting a really bad stomach-ache and I just couldn’t get out of bed,” Boychuck said. “I was so tired.”

She was diagnosed with eosinophilic gastritis, a rare gastrointestinal disorder that causes elevated white blood cell counts. She said her treatment is complicated by also having Graves’ disease, an autoimmune condition.

She would receive steroids to help, but that’s no longer an option. She finished her last dose of the medication, before it causes more harm than good.

“I’m running out of options, so that’s where it gets scary.”

Doctors told the mother she needs to see a specialist but wait times are longer than a year to get in to see someone who understands her condition.

“When you look up the condition it has scary things like organ failure and heart problems and I’m just kind of left in limbo until somebody can see me,” she said. “It makes you feel helpless, knowing that you need help and you just cannot access it in a normal amount of time.

“I don’t know the answer is, but I know it’s not working.”

The family is considering going out of province to try to get help sooner.

The Fraser Institute said a combination of higher-than-average incomes and longer-than-average wait times has put Alberta third highest in terms of the individual cost of waiting.

Global News spoke with Alberta Minister of Hospital and Surgical Health Sciences Matt Jones, who said the data from the Fraser Institute is different than the data they have internally which from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), but adds the province is investing in ways to shorten the wait times to see specialists and get the treatment that’s needed.

“We need people and we need facilities,” Jones said. “We’ve added 2.200 doctors over the last five years and we’ve added 12,000 nurses over the same period of time.”

Jones adds that the province is also trying to leverage anesthesia care teams and implement a program to fast-track access to specialist treatment, streamlining the process to refer patients from general practitioners to specialists.

“On the surgical side we are putting $300 million into enhancing, upgrading and building surgical facilities over the next three years,” Jones said.

While politicians debate the fix to health-care system wait times, Boychuck hopes they understand that there’s a human cost to the wait as well.

“It honestly feels like we’re cattle sometimes,” she said. “We’re all just shoved through the system, band-aid fixes, and you just hope for the best.”

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