Poll Shows Canadians Concerned about Quality of Health Care and Doubtful of Improvement

According to a new survey, most Canadians are not optimistic about the improvement of the quality of health care in their respective provinces, despite new federal health accords being signed with several provinces to address the health-care crisis in Canada.

One year after the federal government offered a $196-billion health accord to the provinces to increase health funding and tackle the growing shortage of health-care workers, Leger conducted a poll revealing the public’s lack of confidence in the situation.

Health-care professionals have long warned about the dangerous lack of health workers, leading to understaffed emergency rooms and a shortage of primary care across the entire health system.

The survey indicated that 70 percent of respondents worry about the ability to receive good quality medical care when needed by themselves or their family members.

Despite deals being signed between the federal government and provinces such as Alberta, British Columbia, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and the Northwest Territories to increase federal health funding, only 17 percent of poll respondents believe that the state of health care is likely to improve in the next two years.

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The web survey of 1,536 Canadian adults conducted by Leger cannot be assigned a margin of error due to the nature of online polls not being a truly random sample.

An alarming 87 percent of the surveyed individuals from Atlantic Canada expressed concern about the ability to receive necessary care.

Those in Atlantic Canada and Quebec were more likely to rate their health systems as poor or very poor, at 66 percent and 51 percent respectively. Meanwhile, 46 percent of respondents in Alberta and 40 percent in British Columbia considered their health-care systems to be good.

When asked to choose words that come to mind when thinking about Canada’s health-care systems, 66 percent selected “long waits,” 42 percent selected “stressed,” and 40 percent selected “failing.”

In regard to the shortage of health-care workers, 67 percent of respondents attributed it to poor working conditions and long hours in hospitals, whereas 40 percent cited health funding cuts and another 40 percent blamed retirements during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last year, provincial premiers called on the prime minister to negotiate a new health funding deal to address the ailing state of their respective health-care systems. All provinces except Quebec have signed onto Ottawa’s deal in principle, and they have until March to sign a customized agreement with Ottawa to access the funding.