Key Takeaways
- An estimated 105,529 Canadians received non-emergency medical treatment outside Canada in 2025.
- The main reasons for seeking medical care abroad include lack of available resources, concerns about quality, and long waiting times in Canada’s healthcare system.
- The most common specialties for Canadians seeking medical care abroad include general surgery, urology, and orthopedic surgery.
- The estimated number of patients receiving treatment outside of Canada varies by province, with Alberta having the highest proportion of patients (3.0%) and Newfoundland and Labrador having the lowest (0.8%).
Introduction to Medical Tourism in Canada
Between 2007 and 2017, researchers at the Fraser Institute estimated the number of Canadians who travelled abroad for medical care. This article follows the same methodology to estimate the number of Canadians who left Canada for medical care in 2025. By estimating how many Canadians receive healthcare outside the country each year, and the type of care they receive, we gain insights into the state of healthcare and medical tourism. Canadians who choose to seek treatment abroad do so for several reasons, many of which may relate to their inability to access quality healthcare in a timely fashion within Canada’s borders.
Reasons for Seeking Medical Care Abroad
Some patients may be sent out of country by the public healthcare system due to a lack of available resources or because some procedures or equipment are not provided in their home jurisdiction. Others may choose to leave Canada because they are concerned about quality and are seeking more advanced healthcare facilities, state-of-the-art medical technologies, or better outcomes. Others may leave in order to avoid some of the adverse medical consequences of waiting for care, such as worsening of their condition, poorer outcomes following treatment, disability, or death. Some may leave simply to avoid delay and to make a quicker return to normal life.
Methodology for Estimating Medical Tourism
Each year, researchers with the Fraser Institute conduct a survey of physicians across Canada in 12 major medical specialties. Included in the survey is the question: "Approximately what percentage of your patients received non-emergency medical treatment in the past 12 months outside Canada?" The answers are averaged for each of the specialties studied in Waiting Your Turn for each province, producing a table that reports the average percentage of patients receiving treatment outside Canada. These percentages are used to estimate the number of Canadians who likely received treatment outside the country.
Results of the Estimation
In 2025, 2.1 per cent of patients in Canada were estimated to have received non-emergency medical treatment outside Canada. Physicians in Alberta reported the highest proportion of patients (in a province) that received treatment abroad (3.0 per cent), while at the other end of the scale physicians in Newfoundland and Labrador reported that only 0.8 per cent of their patients travelled abroad for treatment in 2025. Across Canada, urologists reported the highest proportion of patients (in a specialty) travelling abroad for treatment (3.7 per cent), while the lowest proportion of patients (in a specialty) travelled abroad for cardiovascular surgery (0.9 per cent).
Estimated Number of Patients Receiving Treatment Abroad
Table 2 indicates that a significant number of Canadians—an estimated 105,529 people—may have received treatment outside of the country in 2025. The estimated number of patients receiving treatment outside of Canada by specialty shows that approximately 10,320 Canadians travelled abroad in 2025 to receive general surgery. On the other hand, it’s estimated that only about 477 Canadians went abroad to receive radiation oncology treatment in 2025.
Limitations of the Estimation
There is a temporal mismatch between the timing of the Fraser Institute’s Waiting Your Turn survey and the CIHI’s annual data release. While the calculations above use the temporally mismatched procedure counts to provide up-to-date information, previous calculations adjusting for the temporal mismatch show that it does not appear to materially affect the trend witnessed in the overall count of Canadians, though it does, as expected, affect the actual counts of Canadians. The number of patients receiving treatment outside Canada each year produced by this methodology could be an underestimate. This is the result of a few factors, including that these numbers are based on specialist responses, which means that patients who leave Canada without consulting a specialist are not likely to be included in the count.
Discussion of the Results
These numbers are not insubstantial. They point to a sizeable number of Canadians whose needs and healthcare demands could not be satisfied in a reasonable time within Canada’s borders. There are a number of possible reasons why this may have been the case, including a lack of available resources, concerns about quality, and long waiting times in Canada’s healthcare system. Another explanation may relate to the long waiting times that patients are forced to endure in Canada’s healthcare system. For example, in 2025, patients could expect to wait 13.3 weeks for medically necessary treatment after seeing a specialist.
Conclusion
In 2025, an estimated 105,529 Canadians received non-emergency medical treatment outside Canada. In some cases, these patients may have needed to leave Canada due to a lack of available resources or a lack of appropriate procedures or technologies. In others, their departure may have been driven by a desire to return more quickly to their lives, to seek out superior quality care, or perhaps to save their own lives or avoid the risk of disability. Clearly, the number of Canadians who ultimately receive their medical care in other countries is not insignificant. That a considerable number of Canadians travelled abroad and paid to escape the well-known failings of the Canadian healthcare system speaks volumes about how well the system is working for them.
