If you’ve spent hours waiting in a hospital emergency room on Vancouver Island, you’re not alone—and a new report confirms just how bad it’s gotten.
Victoria General Hospital and Royal Jubilee Hospital now rank among the worst in British Columbia for emergency room wait times.
According to a new report from the Montreal Economic Institute (MEI), patients at Victoria General waited a median time of 6 hours and 36 minutes in 2024—tied for the longest in the province.
The regions second major hospital, Royal Jubilee, wasn’t far behind, with a median wait of 6 hours and 18 minutes.
Across BC, the average emergency room visit lasted 4 hours and 13 minutes last year, which is 14 minutes longer than the year before and over an hour longer than it was five years ago.
“These long wait times are not just numbers—they represent real Canadians facing delays in care,” said Emmanuelle Faubert, the economist behind the report.
The report also looked at how BC compares to the rest of the country. Here’s how the provinces ranked for median ER length of stay in 2024–2025:
- Newfoundland and Labrador: 2 hours 45 minutes
- Alberta: 3 hours 48 minutes
- Manitoba & Ontario: 4 hours
- British Columbia: 4 hours 13 minutes
- New Brunswick: 4 hours 28 minutes
- Prince Edward Island: 4 hours 36 minutes
- Quebec: 5 hours 23 minutes
While BC is somewhere in the middle, the report stresses that “being average” isn’t good enough when people are waiting hours in pain or distress.
The study also measured how long it takes to be seen by a doctor or nurse practitioner—what’s called the “time to initial assessment.”
In BC, that number was 1 hour and 50 minutes. By comparison, Ontario and Alberta had the shortest waits at just 1 hour and 30 minutes.
The report says the rising ER wait times are largely due to two factors, a shortage of family doctors, and a lack of alternatives for people dealing with less urgent issues.
In many cases, people end up in the ER not because it’s a life-threatening emergency—but because there’s nowhere else to go.
To help ease the pressure on ERs, the report points to France’s Immediate Medical Care Centres—privately run walk-in clinics that treat non-life-threatening issues like infections, minor fractures, or cuts needing stitches.
Faubert argues that a similar model could be quicker to launch and more flexible than the province’s current urgent care centres.
Faubert says Canada as a whole needs something similar to fill what she calls the “missing middle”—care for patients whose problems are too urgent for a family doctor but not serious enough to be prioritized in the ER.
She suggested private health centres would face less red tape to get set up and operating and have more flexibility in terms of scheduling and staffing.
“Also, having clinics run and operated by government means it can be slower to spread across the province and the country,” she said. “There’s limitations when you have control that is very centralized.”
As for Vancouver Island, with both major hospitals in Victoria ranking near the bottom in wait time performance, below shows the average wait for all Vancouver Island hospitals:
| Facility | Median Length of Stay (LOS) | Time to Physician Initial Assessment (PIA) |
|---|---|---|
| Saanich Peninsula Hospital | 03:12 | 1:42 |
| North Island Hospital, Campbell River and District | 03:30 | 1:12 |
| West Coast General Hospital | 03:30 | 1:42 |
| North Island Hospital, Comox Valley | 04:06 | 1:42 |
| Cowichan District Hospital | 04:24 | 2:12 |
| Nanaimo Regional General Hospital | 04:30 | 1:54 |
| Royal Jubilee Hospital | 06:18 | 3:12 |
| Victoria General Hospital | 06:36 | 3:18 |
You can read the full MEI report and province-by-province data at iedm.org. Or click here to see the average wait time at hospitals across BC.
