“Across the country, more closures are piling up, too many to count. In British Columbia, the Dr. Helmcken Memorial Hospital in the town of Clearwater—one of the only hospitals in a vast rural area—has been closed more than 60 times this year. In Alberta, small-town ERs have been closed, or left with only nurses, dozens of times. Ontario has had more than 80 ER closures so far in 2022, including the shuttering of the ER in the little town of Chesley, which closed in early October due to a shortage of nurses. It’s not scheduled to reopen until the beginning of December. This fall, a leaked report on ER statistics obtained by the province’s opposition Liberals showed that on any given day in 2022, the average number of patients waiting in emergency departments for an inpatient bed was 884—a 53 per cent increase over 2021. ”

Source https://www.macleans.ca/longforms/er-doctor-healthcare-crisis-canada/