Our friends lived in Alberta, where are you?
I'm in Ontario. My father and aunt received good care here when they were ill with terminal cancer. My father's prognosis was very bad and he declined treatment with chemo, which probably wouldn't have done any good (kidney cancer, already metastasized when found). My aunt got into treatment very soon after her lung cancer was discovered, but alas it couldn't save her.
My uncle in Alberta recently had some chest pain and other problems related to the heart, and he got to see a specialist and had a coronary stent inserted into the narrowed vessel quite soon after the problem appeared.
OTOH, for problems that are more of a quality of life issue, like hip replacements, the waiting list can be quite long, like more than a year - a long time to live in pain with limited mobility. Also I have certainly heard stories of people diagnosed with cancer who had to wait weeks before they could get into treatment, although that partly had to do with a shortage of trained cancer treatment workers, which has happened in the US, also. But then the free-market US system is better at luring nurses and health care workers away from other countries, including Canada, when such shortages arise - it's all the US's fault ;) <-- note winky smiley.