For healthcare its a bit complicated as with all things.
Its also dependent upon the amount of money you put into the system and the amount that you want to put into the system.
For Ontario, Id say that one of the key divergence points was the covid-19 pandemic (as with most things in Canada) and the provincial conservatives.
Before people freak, I want to say that its one of the key divergence points, not the only one.
For Ontario, the Doug Ford government may no pretences against the fact that it wanted to cut back on socialized healthcare prior to the pandemic. In the months leading up to it, they denied pay raises to reflect inflation, there were issues with hiring freezes with nurses, they cut back on funding towards healthcare overall-
which increased the burden on current nursing (most affected) and doctors afterwards.
This is sort of "okay" under normal circumstances, but then you had the covid-19 pandemic, and it was just very, very unlucky timing.
So you had a lot of nurses basically just saying, fuck it, retiring early, getting burnt out, etc. You also had a ton of medical students during this time being fast tracked into working in hospitals, temp workers (cousin was one) entering into the hospitals to help out, etc. Then add in that many temp workers (theyre pretty much all in nursing) also go to retirement homes (since multiple jobs, right), and you get the picture.
Overburdened healthcare system, getting further overburdened.
The other half of this is that Unions also work in conjunction with the conservatives, in particular for doctors who want to keep the profession more "elite".
This is sort of okay, sort of not. It would be okay if they were doing this to keep the standard up, and if we continued to have a declining population. Even for Ford's approach for healthcare, the cynic in me saw it as him wanting to further privatize healthcare and push people away from the socialized approach into private insurance and clinics,
but even for this approach, if you have a declining population overall- sure, you can afford to have less doctors and less nurses. I think the numbers were off, and that we were pushing out nurses too fast compared to our population, but whatever.
What you cannot have, however, is an increasing population, with declining health-care workers. Its one of the additional retarded things that Canada did.
"We need more Tim Hortons workers, quick, open the flood gates, let 9 million Jeets in"
>okay, but we already have a doctors shortage
"Let another million Indians in!!!"
And thats where you wind up with wait times over a year+ for cancer screenings.
The solutions so far, or lack of solutions, are- as someone pointed out, fast track more medical students; but whats the problem here?
Noone Canadian actually is going into university anymore, or simply not enough people are anyways. Its all pretty much foreign students going to university here. Chinese students studying to be doctors, Qatari students, Saudi students, Indian students. I dont want to stereotype like Vivek, and we are in no way lazier, but theres so many cards stacked against us, period.
Chinese students literally study from 7:00am to 10:00pm at night, theyre like ant people. Saudi students pay for the best tutors and stress free living experiences. Medical schools are super expensive, and most bursaries are going out to foreign students. We also have limited spots, and most of the universities wanted that sweet, sweet foreign capital (where they can massively upcharge for a spot). This winds up with us having some Canadian doctors, maybe some Indians stay because they dont want to go to the US,
but most Chinese, most Arabs (the students, if you look at Toronto graduating classes, this is the demographic you see now), they leave.
If you look at the Canadian doctors, before covid we had a brain drain problem with the US as well. As I highlighted earlier, you need to also add in the fact that throughout the pandemic and period leading up to it, we basically cut back on healthcare wage increases, etc.
So imagine this;
youre graduating with a medical degree, the healthcare system is collapsing, your wages arent going up, theres fewer and fewer doctors being trained, let alone nurses, you have massive student debt, theres not 9 million+ Indians being added to the system (oh before I forget in the rant, also if someone asks you have to euthanize perfectly healthy people or fast track them into troonery or you lose your license),
everything is fucked, society is collapsing, your hometown (let alone Toronto or other major city) no longer looks Canadian anymore, all the people you grew up with moved on or away if they could afford it
and then Uncle Sam and the US offers you a higher waged job south of the border where there are complicated things sure (economies not that grand either), but compared to Canada things are much better off, much more ordered, and you have insane QoL benefits.
You do the math here, our healthcare system is entirely fucked and its only going to get worse as the years go on due to that unaddressed competency crisis.
Im not saying that everything is completely horrible and there are heroic stories. Unironically, for immigrants, the Filipinas are pretty good nurses and doing well in the healthcare system (and retirement). Saying that, they often work around the clock, in multiple nursing homes as well, etc.
But its like, this is what a collapsed healthcare system looks like, and I dont see much of a solution for it other than private healthcare at this point (within Canada, or more likely in the US- both of which need insurance), or taking horse dewormer like someone's family did.
Stay healthy, eat healthy, and pray that you dont get some disease basically.