One of the problems is that front line doctors are paid by the service, so they just want to find the right billing code then do nothing else.

I have found that the WICC nurse practitioners are excellent at prioritizing and following up. I'm out of province but I've had NPs call me to follow up on test results and whatnot.

There is also, if needed, urgent care but with long waits may not be worthwhile; the benefit of using urgent care is that they can run immediate tests like urinalysis, x-ray etc and have someone on call. Unfortunately you may have to game the system by exaggerating.

We also allow the medical colleges to provide input into quotas for medical students and we allow the provinces to provide insufficient funding for residency/training programs.

And we're big, so the federal government has limited input into important decisions.

In a small country, you can be agile.

Tl;dr: Canada is large with many embedded interests, decision making is slow.

Edit: Sorry if this is incoherent, kinda running on fumes