Doug Ford has failed to fix Ontario's ER hospital crisis

In 2018, Ford promised to end hallway health care. Not only has it worsened; it is now institutionalized.

Dr. Raghu Venugopal and Dr. Alan Drummond, Special to the Citizen

Published Feb 19, 2025

Too many emergency departments in Ontario are being forced to close temporarily at different times, and the problem is only getting worse. Photo by Alex Lupul /The Canadian Press

Ontario voters should consider the record of the Doug Ford government and your hospital’s local emergency room. The ER is for unplanned illness and injury requiring the rapid diagnosis and treatment of time-sensitive problems. We have betrayed this objective.

For starters, the ER must be open. Before the Ford administration, ER closures were practically non-existent. There was one unplanned closure between 2006 and 2022. Things have changed for the worst. The 2023 Auditor General Report cited 203 closures involving 23 mostly rural hospitals between 2022 and 2023. Ghost Gurney (a citizen-led monitor) counts 19,717 lost ER hours in 2023 and 25,436 hours in 2024 — the worst year in Ontario history for ER closures. COVID-19 without a doubt severely hampered improvements in health care, but things have gone from bad to worse.

This leaves thousands vulnerable to needless suffering, disability and death. In northern Ontario, people travel hundreds of kilometres in search of care. For the most part these ER closures are due to nursing shortages wrought by the Ford government’s mishandling of our nursing colleagues; their plea for adequate working conditions to provide safe, high-quality care; and lack of a strategy to prevent closures. The fallout is desperate hospitals using predatory staffing agencies to fill gaps, costing taxpayers dearly (some nurses cost $160/hour).

Many of our patients need to be seen in seconds or minutes. That’s impossible if the ER is shut.

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