4,600 Atlantic Canadians travelled abroad for medical treatment last year: study

A new study found hundreds of Maritimers are going outside Canada for medical treatment.

Roughly 105,529 Canadians – including 4,651 Atlantic Canadians – travelled outside of the country for medical treatment last year, according to a new study from the Fraser Institute.

The study found more Canadians (12,697) travelled abroad for urology procedures than any other medical speciality.

Many Canadians also left the country for general surgery (10,320), internal medicine procedures such as colonoscopies, gastroscopies and angiographies (8,304), and ophthalmology treatment (6,482).

“More Canadians are deciding they must leave the country to get the medical care they need in a more timely manner,” said Nadeem Esmail, director of health-care policy studies at the Fraser Institute and co-author of Leaving Canada for Medical Care, 2025, in a news release.

The right-leaning Canadian public policy think-tank says long wait times, quality concerns, and a lack of available resources are some of the reasons Canadians choose to seek medical treatment abroad. It notes the median wait between doctor referral and actual treatment in 2025 was 28.6 weeks, which it says was the second-longest wait ever measured and more than triple the wait in 1993 when measurement first started.

“Considering Canada’s long wait times, which can cause increased suffering for patients and decreased quality of life, it’s not surprising so many Canadians are travelling abroad for medical treatment,” said Mackenzie Moir, study co-author and senior policy analyst at the Fraser Institute.

These are the estimated numbers of patients that received treatment outside of Canada in 2025, broken down by province:

N.B. premier agrees some leave because of long wait times

An estimated 1,659 New Brunswickers left the country for medical care, according to the study.

It cites urology, general and orthopaedic surgeries as the most common procedures New Brunswickers sought outside of Canada.

“It is something that we watch because we want to make sure that we have the health services for New Brunswickers,” said Premier Susan Holt.

The Canadian Health Coalition, which advocates for universal public health care, also acknowledged it’s something to monitor.

But the coalition does have questions.

“The study isn’t quite detailed enough to say what the nature of these procedures are. Some of them may be very elective. It could be about in vitro fertilization. It could be a reproductive nature. So, I think there are some questions about what is actually being measured here,” said the coalition’s director of policy and advocacy, Steven Staples.

Wait times for certain procedures in New Brunswick remain high. Nine out of 19 urology surgeries, which include bladder, kidney and male infertility procedures, take 191 days or more than six months, to complete.

“Some people are choosing to go outside of province because of the long waits. So, we continue to try to tackle our waitlists with the aggressive recruitment we’ve been doing of health-care professionals, making the conditions much better to be a health-care professional here in New Brunswick,” said Holt.

Staples, a New Brunswicker whose family has had to navigate the province’s health-care system, says primary care is key.

“What we actually hear is, it’s access to family doctors is the main concern that people have accessing the system,” he said. “But once they get into the system, they find their care quite good.”