Harrowing Experience At Emergency Room Shows Ugly Face Of ‘Free’ Canadian Health Care

You know the old joke about calling a suicide help line and being put on hold? One guy suffering a heart attack can top that absurdity… but it really happened.

With Bernie Sanders being such a big proponent of Americans adopting Canadian-style health care, he might be interested to know how one of the best arguments against it comes practically from his own backyard.

The story unfolds in a small, but thriving, city in the Canadian province of New Brunswick, situated just a few hours’ drive from the Maine border. It’s a pleasant little city of respectable size with a listed population of a little less than 100k people. Which is to say we’re not talking about a remote backwater where one shop serves as a gas station, convenience store, hardware store, and post office. It’s a city, with a full-service hospital of considerable size.

Now, imagine you are a patient suffering from heart attack symptoms. Someone drives you to the hopsital. You got to the nurse’s station, show your health card, and tell them your symptoms — which have all the classic signs of a heart attack. You tell them your dad died young of a heart attack.

What do you suppose happens next? Are you (a) rushed into an examination room where a doctor can provide you care? Or are you (b) directed to wait in a crowded waiting room for 13 hours until it’s finally your turn to see the doctor.

Definitely not broken

“A Moncton man says his faith in New Brunswick’s health care system has been shaken after he spent 13 hours in the Moncton hospital emergency room with symptoms of a heart attack”

“Horizon says if patients feel they did not get appropriate care, they are… pic.twitter.com/4efS91zegm

— cbcwatcher (@cbcwatcher) July 22, 2025

As it happens, he did have a heart attack, and he had a blocked artery. In that situation, time is critical because with a blockage, the nearby tissue can begin to die. In his case, the nearby tissue was the lower part of his heart.

Did you catch the part where they said the acceptable TARGET wait time for a patient arriving for ‘acute care’ to make his way to a hosptial bed was within 8 hours? Or how they are struggling to hit that target, with waits often as long as 20 hours?

For acute care needs?

What could explain such a setback?

Let’s look at the city’s own promotional materials and see if we can find ourselves a clue…

Relative to our population size, Greater Moncton attracted more people than 99% of Canada’s 160+ urban centres. In 2024, Moncton CMA had the second highest immigration rate in the country, with 6,895 permanent residents admitted, marking a 37% increase over 2023 and a 260% increase since 2019. It’s the place to be—and building diverse and inclusive communities is what’s happening here.

A strong entrepreneurial spirit. A dynamic downtown. A bilingual workforce. A booming economy. These are just a few reasons why more and more skilled individuals from around the globe are choosing to make their mark in Moncton. Our city is an urban center amidst stunning natural wonders with a vibrant cultural and social scene. Our team is passionate about building an inclusive community where families of all backgrounds and income levels can live, work, and play. In Moncton, you can have it both ways: access to all the amenities of a bigger city without any of the compromises. — Moncton Impact

It has often been said you can have unfettered immigration, or a robust social safety net, but not both.

Now we’re seeing some real-life test cases that bear that out.