Canada
Health & Medical Emergencies
Last verified August 15, 2026
Written for U.S. passport holders
Emergency Numbers
- Dial 911 for ambulance, police, or fire, a single unified number covering nearly all of Canada (a handful of extremely remote areas are the rare exception).
- It's free to call, available 24/7, and the operator will ask which service you need once connected.
- For U.S. consular emergency assistance (a detained or hospitalized American, coordinating care, notifying family), call the State Department's Overseas Citizens Services from anywhere in the world: +1-888-407-4747 (from the U.S. or Canada) or +1-202-501-4444 (from overseas). This is separate from the local emergency number and won't dispatch an ambulance itself, but it's the number that gets the U.S. government involved.
Getting Treated as a Foreigner
- Canada's public healthcare (Medicare) covers Canadian residents, not visitors. As a U.S. tourist, you're not covered by it at all, and Canadian hospitals bill out-of-country visitors directly, at rates that can be surprisingly high precisely because the system isn't built around out-of-pocket, uninsured billing the way U.S. hospitals are.
- Travel insurance is genuinely important here despite how similar Canada otherwise feels to the U.S.; 'universal healthcare' describes coverage for residents, not a guarantee of free or cheap care for an American tourist.
The Gotcha
The most common assumption trips people up here: Canada having 'free healthcare' is true for Canadians, not for visiting Americans. Because the system isn't designed around billing uninsured out-of-country patients efficiently, a Canadian hospital bill for a foreign tourist can end up costing more than the equivalent visit would in some U.S. markets, not less. Don't skip travel insurance just because you're staying within North America.
Sources
This page was drafted from the primary sources below. Rules change, so check the linked page directly before relying on any of this.
- 9-1-1 Services for Traditional Wireline, VoIP and Wireless Phone Services (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC))
- Help Abroad (Overseas Citizens Services) (U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs)