Hour 1 of Ottawa Now for Fri. June 12th, 2026

Hundreds of thousands of sick and injured Canadians are spending up to two days or longer parked on hard stretchers or plastic chairs in the country’s swamped emergency departments, waiting for a scarce bed to open upstairs, and these delays can be deadly. New data show that, in 2024-2025, one in 10 emergency patients — 1.5 million people — spent more than 14 hours in emergency. Of the 16.1 million ER visits reported in total, 1.8 million people needed to be admitted to hospital. While half waited less than five hours for a bed after the decision was made to admit them, one in 10, or...