MEI-Ipsos poll: 56 per cent of Canadians want greater access to private care

• Support for private health care is highest in Quebec (67 per cent) and in Alberta (65 per cent).
• 76 per cent of Canadians think their healthcare system is too bureaucratic.
• 83 per cent of Canadians believe that patients waiting too long should be reimbursed for treatment in a private facility.

Montreal, April 16, 2026 – Canadians want a more accessible, less bureaucratic healthcare system that allows more room for the private sector. That is the picture that emerges from a new MEI-Ipsos poll published this morning.

“Canadians understand that a universal system does not have to be run exclusively by government,” says Emmanuelle Faubert, economist at the MEI. “They see private providers as a concrete way of reducing wait times and having better access to care.”

A majority of Canadians (56 per cent of respondents) want greater access to healthcare services supplied by independent providers. Quebec and Alberta are the regions where support is the highest, at 67 and 65 per cent respectively.

Nearly three in four Canadians (72 per cent) believe that private facilities can provide healthcare services faster than hospitals that are run by the government.

Similarly, 72 per cent of Canadians support the adoption of a mixed universal health system, as exists in France and Sweden, where treatment is provided in both public and private hospitals, but covered by public health insurance. This proportion is up eight points compared to last year.

The idea of introducing what are known as care guarantees, which is to say allowing patients who have waited too long to obtain private treatment reimbursed by the government, is supported by 83 per cent of Canadians polled.

“Governments should not stubbornly cling to what isn’t working, but should instead look at what does work elsewhere and adopt it here,” concludes Ms. Faubert. “Canadians clearly want change, and policymakers should listen to them.”

The poll also shows a profound dissatisfaction with the bureaucratization of the health system.

Three-quarters of Canadians (76 per cent) consider their healthcare system to be overly bureaucratic. This sentiment is particularly strong in Alberta and Quebec, where the proportion rises to 81 per cent of respondents.

The population is also worried about the growth of health spending and the poor results obtained.

Across the country, 60 per cent of respondents recognize that the rate of growth of healthcare spending in their province is unsustainable.

Meanwhile, only 34 per cent of them believe that increased spending has improved the state of their province’s health system.

“Although we keep throwing additional billions of dollars at healthcare, our access problems have persisted, and Canadians know it,” points out Ms. Faubert. “It’s time for politicians to recognize that the state of our healthcare systems is not explained by a lack of resources, but rather by the rigid and excessively bureaucratic nature of our model.”

A sample of 1,159 Canadians aged 18 years and over were polled online by Ipsos between March 26 and 29, 2026. The precision of online polls is measured using a credibility interval due to the non-probabilistic nature of the sample. In this case, the results are accurate to within plus or minus 3.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

The results of the MEI-Ipsos poll are available here.

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The MEI is an independent public policy think tank with offices in Montreal, Ottawa, and Calgary. Through its publications, media appearances, and advisory services to policymakers, the MEI stimulates public policy debate and reforms based on sound economics and entrepreneurship.

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