More than 23,000 Canadians have died while waiting for health care over the past year, recent government data suggests.
Think tank SecondStreet.org’s annual “Died on a Waiting List” report, released on Nov. 26, analyzes data sourced from provincial health authorities to determine how many people died while on a waiting list for surgery or diagnostic treatment.
A total of 23,746 Canadians died in the 2024-2025 fiscal year while awaiting treatment, the report found. That number does not include Alberta and some parts of Manitoba.
Report author and president of SecondStreet.org Colin Craig said it was a 3 percent increase over data from the previous year.
“What’s really sad is that behind many of these figures are stories of patients suffering during their final years – grandparents who dealt with chronic pain while waiting for hip operations, people leaving children behind as they die waiting for heart operations, so much suffering,” Craig said.
Patients who died last year were waiting for a variety of services from heart surgery to diagnostic scans. One person who died had been on a waitlist for nine years, the report noted, but didn’t indicate what type of treatment the patient needed.
The report also noted that government spending on health care reached an all-time high in 2024-25, at $244 billion or an average of $5,943 per person. Health-care spending for 2025-26 was “on track” to surpass that number, Craig wrote.
Provincial Numbers
Ontario recorded the highest number of deaths among waitlisted individuals, totalling 10,634, with Quebec following at 6,290. British Columbia reported 4,620 deaths while people awaited care, Nova Scotia saw 727 deaths, and Newfoundland and Labrador had 542.
Saskatchewan documented 419 deaths among those on health-care waiting lists, while Manitoba had 215 individuals who died before they could receive treatment. Prince Edward Island recorded 178 patient deaths, while New Brunswick had the fewest deaths at 121.
Overall, 100,876 Canadians on a waitlist have died since 2018, SecondStreet said.
Not all provinces track the information comprehensively, SecondStreet notes. Saskatchewan and New Brunswick’s Ministries of Health only provided numbers of patients who died while on a surgical waitlist, but do not track the information for diagnostic waitlists. It also noted that, since 2019, Alberta Health Services had provided incomplete information, and now no longer tracks the data.
The organization estimated there are nearly six million people currently on a wait list for health-care services.
