Ontario spends less on healthcare per person than any other province in Canada

Public confidence in government services in Ontario has been rapidly eroding since the pandemic, and a new study on healthcare expenditure nationwide only serves to add insult to (literal) injury.

A local law firm this month delved into the data about what different provinces invest in the sector, and sadly, Ontario came at the bottom of the list.

“Healthcare spending is a crucial aspect of public policy and quality of life in Canada, and the expenditure per person varies significantly across provinces,” the report from Toronto-based Preszler Injury Lawyers starts.

While somewhere like Nunavut spends, based on Canadian Institute for Health Information data, nearly $24,000 per resident annually, Canada’s most populous province devotes only slightly more than $8,000 per person per year to medical needs.

By comparison, B.C., Alberta, and Saskatchewan each spend just north of $9,000 per constituent yearly on healthcare, while the East Coast provinces allocate between $8,400 and $10,300 per citizen.

Chart of what each province and territory spends on healthcare per resident a year from Preszler Injury Lawyers.

Of course, there are vast differences in each part of the country’s population, location, infrastructure and many other factors to consider before deducing that this is necessarily a negative thing for Ontario, with the study itself stating that “efficiency of healthcare systems and the emphasis on preventive care can an impact on overall cost.”

Newfoundland and Labrador, for example, is believed to be spending more due to an aging population and high rates of certain chronic diseases.

But, for people already stressing about the direction the healthcare system is going — with emergency rooms closing down, family doctors progressively harder to find and private clinics on the rise — finding out that Doug Ford’s leadership earmarks such a paltry amount can understandably confirm and stoke existing fears.