Canadians are ready for health-care reform—Australia shows the way

Australia offers real-world examples of how public/private partnerships can be successfully integrated in a universal health-care framework. Not only does Australia prove it can be done without sacrificing universal coverage for all, Australia spends less money (as a share of its economy) than Canada and enjoys more timely medical care.

Canada’s health-care system is crumbling. Long wait times, hallway health care and burned-out staff are now the norm. Unsurprisingly, a new poll finds that the majority of Canadians (73 per cent) say the system needs major reform.

As noted in a recent editorial in the Globe and Mail, we can learn key lessons from Australia.

There are significant similarities between the two countries with respect to culture, the economy and even geographic characteristics. Both countries also share the goal of ensuring universal health coverage. However, Australia outperforms Canada on several key health-care performance metrics.

After controlling for differences in age (where appropriate) between the two countries, our recent study found that Australia’s health-care system outperformed Canada’s on 33 (of 36) performance measures. For example, Australia had more physicians, hospital beds, CT scanners and MRI machines per person compared to Canada. And among the 30 universal health-care countries studied, Canada ranked in the bottom quartile for the availability of these critical health-care resources.

Australia also outperforms Canada on key measures of wait times. In 2023 (the latest year of available data), 39.5 per cent of patients in Australia were able to make a same or next day appointment when they were sick compared to only 22.3 per cent in Canada. And 9.6 per cent of Canadians reported waiting more than one year to see a specialist compared to only 4.5 per cent of Australians. Similarly, almost one-in-five (19.9 per cent) Canadians reported waiting more than one year for non-emergency surgery compared to only 11.8 per cent of Australians.

So, what does Australia do differently to outperform Canada on these key measures?

Although the Globe and Mail editorial touches on the availability of private insurance in Australia, less attention is given to the private sector’s prominent role in the delivery of health care.

In 2016 (the latest year of available data) almost half of all hospitals in Australia (48.5 per cent) were private. And in 2021/22 (again, the latest year of available data), 41 per cent of all hospital care took place in a private facility. That percentage goes up to 70.3 per cent when only considering hospital admissions for non-emergency surgery.

But it’s not only higher-income patients who can afford private insurance (or those paying out of pocket) who get these surgeries. The Australian government encourages the uptake of private insurance and partially subsidizes private care (at a rate of 75 per cent of the public fee), and governments in Australia also regularly contract out publicly-funded care to private facilities.

In 2021/22, more than 300,000 episodes of publicly-funded care occurred in private facilities in Australia. Private hospitals also delivered 73.5 per cent of care funded by Australia’s Department of Veterans’ Affairs. And in 2019/20, government sources (including the federal government) paid for almost one-third (32.8 per cent) of private hospital expenditures.

Which takes us back to the new opinion poll (by Navigator), which found that 69 per cent of Canadians agree that health-care services should include private-sector involvement. While defenders of the status quo continue to criticize this approach, Australia offers real-world examples of how public/private partnerships can be successfully integrated in a universal health-care framework. Not only does Australia prove it can be done without sacrificing universal coverage for all, Australia spends less money (as a share of its economy) than Canada and enjoys more timely medical care.

While provincial governments remain stubbornly committed to a failed model, Canadians are clearly expressing their desire for health-care reforms that include a prominent role for private partners in the delivery of universal care.

Australia is just one example. Public/private partnerships are the norm in several more successful universal health-care systems (such as Germany and Switzerland). Instead of continuing to remain an outlier, Canada should follow the examples of Australia and other countries and engage with the private sector to fulfill the promise of universal health care.

Authors:

Bacchus Barua and Mackenzie Moir

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Business

Carney government’s first budget should signal end to crippling ‘climate’ policies

Published on November 4, 2025

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Kenneth P. Green

The Carney government will table its long-awaited first budget tooday. The vote on the budget is expected to be a confidence vote, so the stakes are high. Everyone is speculating about what’s to be in it. CBC, the Toronto Sun and Global News are all reading the tea leaves. And I hate to miss a tea party.

The budget is, naturally, going to have major implications for Canada’s economic indicators of debt, deficit, spending, governmental expansion/contraction, and so on. I’ll leave all that macroeconomics to my colleagues at Fraser Institute. But Prime Minister Carney has made some specific claims in my areas of specialty (environment, natural resources and regulation), and has made noises about Canada becoming an “energy superpower” and “building things” again. He’s also, in speeches leading up to the budget, re-affirmed that the Trudeau-era climate-change-centric, carbon-emission-control mindset is unchanged. The wording has changed, but the focus and predicates remain. Now though, rather than pounding on terms such as carbon, greenhouse and climate change, it’s all about Canadian policy being “responsible,” “sustainable,” “moral” and “equitable.”

Here’s what I’ll look for in the budget.

First, will the government dismantle or reform bills C-48, C-69 and the oil and gas emission cap—the three-pronged trident of death for major oil and gas development in Canada? Without this, it will be difficult to take any of his talk of energy superpower or natural resource trade renaissance seriously.

Second, will the government renounce or seriously reform the economically irrational, unattainable and crippling “net-zero 2050” anti-carbon agenda and shift Canada’s climate policy from emissions abatement to something potentially more attainable, such as adaptation and resilience building? Will it free Canada’s carbon natural resource economy to be the engine of Canadian prosperity and international competitiveness once again? Or keep Canada’s carbon (oil and gas) economy (and manufacturing economy) on a path toward extinction?

Third, will the government reset the tone of Canadian culture and defuse some of the adversarial relations with resource-rich provinces by acknowledging that Canada’s natural-resource economy has been, is now and must continue to be a cornerstone in Canada’s total economy? Or will it stick to the “net-zero” extinction process for carbon emissions, which will also be an extinction process for anything that requires substantial energy generation, and for the development of natural resources as the primary wealth engine of Canada? Will the government end the disdain for the role of Canada (and notably some of Canada’s western provinces) as a natural-resources export economy?

The budget will offer a window into the mind of Prime Minister Carney on the matter of natural resources in Canada’s economy and society. With global changes undermining the international carbon control regime and idee fixe, and with an understanding that Canada is on an economic precipice, there’s an opportunity here. Let’s hope Carney works to unshackle one of Canada’s greatest engines of economic progress—its energy and natural resource production, transformation, transportation, consumption and exportation.

Canadians could use the boost in quality of life that Canada’s natural resources could bring to current and future generations.

Alberta

Alberta government’s plan will improve access to MRIs and CT scans

Published on November 4, 2025

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Nadeem Esmail and Tegan Hill

The Smith government may soon allow Albertans to privately purchase diagnostic screening and testing services, prompting familiar cries from defenders of the status quo. But in reality, this change, which the government plans to propose in the legislature in the coming months, would simply give Albertans an option already available to patients in every other developed country with universal health care.

It’s important for Albertans and indeed all Canadians to understand the unique nature of our health-care system. In every one of the 30 other developed countries with universal health care, patients are free to seek care on their own terms with their own resources when the universal system is unwilling or unable to satisfy their needs. Whether to access care with shorter wait times and a more rapid return to full health, to access more personalized services or meet a personal health need, or to access new advances in medical technology. But not in Canada.

That prohibition has not served Albertans well. Despite being one of the highest-spending provinces in one of the most expensive universal health-care systems in the developed world, Albertans endure some of the longest wait times for health care and some of the worst availability of advanced diagnostic and medical technologies including MRI machines and CT scanners.

Introducing new medical technologies is a costly endeavour, which requires money and the actual equipment, but also the proficiency, knowledge and expertise to use it properly. By allowing Albertans to privately purchase diagnostic screening and testing services, the Smith government would encourage private providers to make these technologies available and develop the requisite knowledge.

Obviously, these new providers would improve access to these services for all Alberta patients—first for those willing to pay for them, and then for patients in the public system. In other words, adding providers to the health-care system expands the supply of these services, which will reduce wait times for everyone, not just those using private clinics. And relief can’t come soon enough. In Alberta, in 2024 the median wait time for a CT scan was 12 weeks and 24 weeks for an MRI.

Greater access and shorter wait times will also benefit Albertans concerned about their future health or preventative care. When these Albertans can quickly access a private provider, their appointments may lead to the early discovery of medical problems. Early detection can improve health outcomes and reduce the amount of public health-care resources these Albertans may ultimately use in the future. And that means more resources available for all other patients, to the benefit of all Albertans including those unable to access the private option.

Opponents of this approach argue that it’s a move towards two-tier health care, which will drain resources from the public system, or that this is “American-style” health care. But these arguments ignore that private alternatives benefit all patients in universal health-care systems in the rest of the developed world. For example, Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands and Australia all have higher-performing universal systems that provide more timely care because of—not despite—the private options available to patients.

In reality, the Smith government’s plan to allow Albertans to privately purchase diagnostic screening and testing services is a small step in the right direction to reduce wait times and improve health-care access in the province. In fact, the proposal doesn’t go far enough—the government should allow Albertans to purchase physician appointments and surgeries privately, too. Hopefully the Smith government continues to reform the province’s health-care system, despite ill-informed objections, with all patients in mind.