I've never waited to see a specialist if it was high priority. I saw four ob/gyns and three midwives in the last three weeks of my second pregnancy! The longest wait I ever had was two months to get an appointment to get my knee looked at, and in the meantime the problem cleared up on its own. The specialist told me I'd be fine if I worked out the muscles in my lower body a bit more, though it was likely I'd need some knee surgery twenty or thirty years down the road.

Canada doesn't have enough doctors, due to some stupidity a few years ago that cut back the number of spots in medical school for a couple of years, coupled with a system that makes it very difficult for foreign-trained doctors to obtain a license to practise medicine here. I know some ideas are floating around about how to fix that problem - things like bringing immigrant doctors in on work visas with residencies already lined up in underserviced areas, like a small-town Northern hospital. They can apply for landed immigrant status when their residency is over, by which time they've been working in an underserviced community for several years and have hopefully put down roots and will stay there.

But that hasn't happened yet.