Canada brag about health care, but they keep a dirty little secret Dems don’t like to talk about.
Not the one about USA being the for-profit emergency pressure valve for treatment options the Canadian government refuses to provide for or fund. Not the cheaper to kill them with Medical Assistance in Dying at the hands of a system they’ve paid into for decades than to provide a dignified death elderly citizens deserve.
Nope. The dirty little secret is about the real reason behind the wait times that are once again a topic of conversation online. When they find out just how bad the wait times for things like MRI machines are in Canada, they are shocked. But those numbers start to make so much more sense once you realize the root of the problem stems from access to the machines themselves.
For some very particular reasons.
Let’s start with the wait times. Here’s a tweet that was getting some buzz.
I recently learned that the entire country of Canada has fewer MRI machines than the state of Pennsylvania, despite having 3x the population.
That’s wild… The median time for a scan is over 4 months. 💀
https://t.co/0HyveNVStJ https://t.co/2HnQv7z0MG
— ZUBY: (@ZubyMusic) October 6, 2026
He was reacting to a documentary about the decline of Canada called Broken Country.
Canada is one of the largest countries in the world, with some of the richest natural resources and a founding seat in the G7. It is rapidly falling apart. How did this happen, and can it be put right?
No party line and no agenda. A fact-led search for answers that viewers in the United States and across the West will recognise.
The filmmakers interviewed thousands of Canadians across the country and more than 70 (32 featured)
policy experts, to examine the reality behind a country often held up in the United States as a model for universal healthcare, social programs and government intervention
Meanwhile, on Canada’s left coast, we’ve got a left-wing politician running for re-election to run British Columbia with heartwarming campaign speeches like this one:
Here’s David Eby TODAY: "Right now in the province, people can wait 10 weeks for surgeries, but they can also wait 50 weeks or more for some surgeries, and that is totally unacceptable.” B.C. NDP campaign event, Oct. 6, 2026.
Who’s been running the province the last FOUR YEARS? https://t.co/Nr2srigI2f
— Cole Hogan (@colewhogan) October 6, 2026
Seems like he’s got himself a bit of a problem. It’s system-wide across the country, regardless of which party is in power.
Dems in this election cycle are touting a ‘free’ health care option, while winking and nodding at what price such a promise will come at. The relevant quote attributed to President Ford is, “A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have”. If you think that’s an overstatement of what happens when the Government is the last word on both your heath care costs AND on your health care options, you have missed the lessons inherent in the Charlie Gard story.
Britain’s ‘Free’ Health Care Faces ANOTHER Charlie Gard Let-The-Baby-Die Crisis
The UK problem has its own answer in Canada, with Stats Canada reporting that one in twenty Canadian deaths come as a result of the Medical Assistance In Dying (MAiD) program. Democrats are desperate to catch up and implement the same ‘free’ system. What they don’t ask is why some Canadian hospitals have entire wings closed down despite
Doug Ford, the Ontario Premier best known for picking a fight with Trump over Lake America (Or was it Ontario?) came to office in 2018 under a promise to eliminate Hallway Health Care, with beds in unusual spaces like hallways near nursing stations, TV rooms and so on. Because demand for care routinely outstrips supply, further complicated by how nearly impossible it is to secure a space in a retirement home.
Predictably, his promise failed.
An average of 1,390 Ontario patients were treated each day in “unconventional spaces” — mainly stretchers in emergency department hallways — in early 2024, according to Ontario Health’s 2023-24 annual report.
This was slightly higher than the average of 1,326 patients the year prior, the agency stated in its 2022-23 annual report. — Trllium Feb 5, 2026
Like so many failed politicians, rather than fixing the problem, he made it go away. The announcement was made that this number will no longer be tracked. ‘Unconventional’ care spaces are just the tip of the iceberg.
The real mechanism of pumping the brakes on spending is limiting how many machines — and medical staff — are available to provide necessary treatment.
With nobody absorbing the costs through, say, insurance or private payment, the government shields itself from cost overruns by building in structural failsafes that, ultimately, let people die so they can save a buck.
Is it any WONDER the Canadian government loves the MAiD system? Look at how effective it is at ridding the world of what 20th Century Germany once called Lebensunwertes Leben or ‘useless eaters’.
Limiting access to the machines themselves is another aspect of pumping the spending brakes. Of course, that means fewer patients can be treated, even as Canada threw its border open to so many unvetted immigrants that their population swelled by over 13%.
Population rocketed from 36 Million at the beginning of Trudeau’s term in 2016 to approaching 42 million today
Medical imaging technologies such as MRIs, CT scanners and even older technologies such as ultrasound machines are vital tools for medical decision-making and treatment. Unfortunately, Canada tends to have fewer and older advanced medical technologies than other developed countries with universal health care, which has consequences for not only waiting lists but ultimately patient care and well-being.
Internationally when compared with other developed countries that also have universal health care, Canada ranks remarkably poorly when it comes to access to medical technologies. In the latest international comparison, out of 31 universal health-care countries for whom data was available, Canada ranked 27th for MRI machines per population, and 28th for CT scanners per population. Canada also ranked 22nd of 28 countries for whom data was available in PET scanners per population.
[…]
This failure in terms of both the absolute number of medical imaging technologies as well as their age is happening alongside some of the highest health spending in the developed world when compared with other universal health care countries. The lack of new and advanced medical technologies is not the result of a lack of spending on health care.
An examination of the diagnostic imaging technologies used in Canada’s health care system reveals yet another failure of the Canadian model. Diagnostic technologies are not only relatively few in number in Canada when compared with the availability of technology in other universal health care countries, but the few technologies Canadians have access to are too often old, outdated and potentially no longer clinically acceptable. Canadians deserve much better for the world-class bill we pay. — full article here: Frasier Institute
Don’t even get me started on the sneaky ways that doctor shortages are orchestrated, through caps on study caps on billable fees, or an upper limit on how many doctors in a specialty are allowed to work in a particular region.
And remember kids…
However badly you think the Canadian system is run, remember: when Canadian patients get REALLY desperate, they can draw on their savings or a GoFundMe account and hit up an American hospital for care they can’t afford to wait for.
The REAL gaps in their care will stay hidden so long as some Canadians have an emergency option across the border. But if the Bernie Bros ever get their way? Both countries will wake up to find themselves in a world of hurt.
