Patients, workers push for Ontario election to focus on long ER waits [Video]

Twenty hours waiting in the emergency room wasn’t unusual for Brodie Houlette.

After the 39-year-old financial services worker contracted a heart infection in 2022, he spent months in and out of a Toronto hospital ER, waiting first for a diagnosis, then more tests, and then for admission and treatment.

Two years later, and the experience has left a profound impression on him.

“It was a wait in emergency rooms of 14,16, 20 hours,” he said. 

“You’d be sleeping in a bay as you waited for a room to come up … It was a disaster.”

Houlette says he’s paying close attention to this provincial election and wants fixing ER waits and closures to become a prominent ballot box question. 

He says his experience made it clear that staffing shortages and space constraints in Ontario hospitals require urgent attention from politicians of all party stripes.

“Trump has unfortunately changed the reality …