Poll suggests long wait times led half of Canadians to avoid going to the hospital

Posted October 29, 2026 3:34 pm.

A new poll suggests long wait times lead half of Canadians to avoid seeing a doctor or going to the hospital. 

The poll was conducted by Léger and commissioned by right-leaning think-tanks the Montreal Economic Institute, SecondStreet.org and Canadian Constitution Foundation. 

The percentage of respondents who said they avoided consulting doctors because of wait times was highest among women, people over 55 and Quebecers.

The poll ran from Oct. 16 to 19, 2026, among an online panel of 1,510 Canadians.

The survey numbers do not indicate whether the people who avoided seeing a doctor had seen a nurse or turned to other services like pharmacists. 

It is also unclear whether respondents started avoiding hospitals because of wait times over the past year or at another point in their lives. 

Just over a quarter of poll respondents said they have paid for private health care to avoid wait times or unsatisfactory service.

The survey also found that 61 per cent of respondents supported being able to pay out of pocket or use insurance to access private care if they could not get timely care in the public system. However, a quarter of respondents said they opposed the coexistence of public and private health-care systems.

Asked if they believed the health-care system in their area needed change, 84 per cent of respondents said yes. 

The polling industry’s professional body, the Canadian Research Insights Council, says online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population.

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