Hospital Emergency Room Dysfunction

 

Too Many Canadians Are Leaving Emergency Rooms Untreated 

"[Needless, avoidable deaths are recurring] with unsettling regularity, not randomly, not rarely [in Canada's hospitals; a function of choked and overwhelmed emergency departments]."

"[The dark reality is a] hidden pandemic [of excess deaths, higher than] citizens of a highly developed country have a right to expect."

"A patient waits for hours in a Canadian emergency department, deteriorates quietly, sometimes visibly, then dies before being assessed, [most often from a heart attack, stroke or sepsis]."

Report published in the Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine  

"People are despondent. They're scared that there are going to be bad outcomes and they're going to feel responsible. But they don't see any respite."

"[Emergency departments are now in a] chronic disaster state; [the capacity required to care for patients] patently inadequate."

"It's got completely out of control and meets the formal definition of disaster -- a serious disruption of functioning, that exceed the ability of available resources and results in excess harm -- on a daily basis."

"When there is crowding all over the hospital, it leads to chaos in the ED and bad things predictably happen in that setting."

"Eventually our system will just be seen by the public as unsustainable. I've got many friends who once believed that our health system was a defining feature of being Canadian, who are losing faith in the system."

"Until we are able to translate the real lives lost in this hidden pandemic into terms that will resonate emotionally with the public -- that will make them say this is untenable -- we won't get anywhere."

"We are failing to deliver on a defining national priority. The feds have to do something."

Dr. Alecs Chochinov, professor of medicine, University of Manitoba 

Across Canada, emergency rooms are routinely operating beyond 100 per cent capacity. Photo by John Mahoney/Postmedia/File

 

In actual fact, the feds have 'done something'. They have helped to destroy that 'defining national priority' which they fail to recognize as one of their most vital responsibilities. The federal government -- the Liberal government, in all its successions -- views immigration as a far more important national priority than national security, much less the social benefits in health and welfare that any responsible government, particularly that of a recognized 'first-world' economy must see as its primary function. 

 

The Liberal government is obsessed with trade and prosperity for the nation, to be sure, alarmed at the falling birth rate, determined not to exploit the country's natural resources, and eager for a workforce that will continue to labour mightily to feature its special green and social welfare programs that appear to exclude the well-being of its population in its focus on promoting Critical Race Theory, DEI and wokeism. Where transgender rights and economic migrant intake reign supreme.

 

Under Canada's Liberal governments immigration, refugee intake and migrant acceptance have ballooned to the point where the government departments responsible for administering the programs along with verifying the status of applicants with background checks for undesirable affiliations and actions have gone by the board. Where due to indifference and lax attitudes toward security, Canada is a great place to launder financing of terrorism abroad.

 

Where on the streets of Canada operatives of the very terrorist groups that have made their deserved presence on the federal government's own proscribed terrorist lists walk about freely to harass and threaten Canadians. Where an estimated 600 agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran's government, its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Basij police have a presence, enjoying Canada's comfortable way of life. Where members of Hezbollah and Hamas have integrated themselves, along with the Muslim Brotherhood through infiltration of the country. 

 

Where they engage in the illicit drug trade, human smuggling, money laundering and the presence of illegal cryptocurrency shops that illegally send money abroad, funding terrorist groups as well as Iran's IRGC itself. Refugees brought in from Syria and the Palestinian territories to Canada so overwhelm the system of verification and application approval that scant attention is given to background checks resulting in Canada hosting as permanent residents and citizens, individuals highly connected with terrorism.

 

The fallout of the immense numbers of immigrants, refugees, migrants and foreign students on study visas that added millions to the Canadian population in just the last few years has had the added effect of straining the country's social welfare system, its public schools, housing, and hospital-medical facilities. There is a dire shortage of medical personnel; doctors, nurses, specialists, technicians and hospital beds. Schools are burdened with children learning English, and bringing with them the cultural attitudes of their home countries. 

 

"A review is launched, a statement is issued. Regret is expressed, perhaps a policy adjusted."

"Then the system resumes its normal operation."

"When patients stop moving, they accumulate. And the place where they accumulate is the only part of the system that cannot refuse entry [the Emergency Room]."

Report published in the Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine  

 

Professor Alecs Chochinow and his colleagues produced a commentary on the state of Canada's health care system, stressing the stories behind media reports of people dying after waiting long hours for care in hospital emergency rooms. Their report was published in the Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine. In it, they produce startling figures and statistics as well as individual examples of the hapless failure of the country's universal medicare system.

 

As a result of emergency department crowding, they point out, an estimated 8,000 to 15,000 Canadians die each year. Deaths take place in the ED, on the wards or following a patient's release from  hospital prematurely to the patient's actual need for continued hospitalization. A 55-year-old woman died of cardiac arrest after waiting 11 hours in an emergency department in Winnipeg, awaiting admission to a hospital room. Another 44-year-old man died after spending 8 hours with chest pains in an Edmonton emergency room.  

"[It's not uncommon to have people in] 10-out-of-10 abdominal pain with no pain medication, no comfort and nowhere to sit for 12 hours in our emergency department because we can't them them in."

Alberta physician Dr. Paul Parks 

 A list of at least six potentially preventable deaths occurring over a two-week period was compiled in Alberta, including a 50-year-old man who perished from a bacterial blood infection causing multiple-organ failure. Emergency rooms across Canada routinely operate beyond 100 percent capacity; 30 to 40 stretchers and cubicles occupied by people assessed and 'admitted' to hospital are placed there awaiting an empty bed on a ward; beds filled with patients no longer requiring care, but nowhere to go to; in long-term care, or home care, or rehab.

Staff burnout, delayed diagnoses, errors and excess deaths result from this kind of crowding, with crowded emergency departments seen as proxies for crowded and dysfunctional hospitals. The federal government shrugs; health is a provincial matter. Yet the Canada Health Act points to timely access to care as a priority.

The emergency department of the Rockyview General Hospital is pictured in Calgary. (Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press)

 

Bondi Beach Atrocity

A floral tribute outside the Bondi Pavilion at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Steve Markham)

"It's Australia's great shame that the worst atrocity to befall Jewish people since the October 7 massacre should have taken place here. Australia now joins all the other western countries that are obviously plagued by militant Islam, notwithstanding the heroics of a Muslim bystander, who wrestled a gun off one of the attackers."

"Regrettably this atrocity was just the latest escalation in the Jew hatred that's lately afflicted my country, starting with local Islamist preachers 'rejoicing' in the October 7 carnage within hours of it taking place; continuing with a mob at the Sydney Opera House screaming 'f--k the Jews', and then 100,000 people marching across the Sydney Harbour Bridge yelling 'death to the IDF; and 'globalize the intifada'." 

"As was predicted they've now got their wish. First, there was Jew-hating graffiti, then vandalism of Jewish property, then the fire-bombing of synagogues, and now the Bondi massacre If incitement to violence goes unchecked, soon enough real violence takes place; and soon enough, not just against Jews but against everyone who's not for an apocalyptic Islamic caliphate."

"Yet the response of Australia's leadership to this escalating Jew hatred has been a case study in hand-wringing impotence: no hate preachers have been prosecuted or deported and no hate marches have been banned [as is possible under existing laws], even though these have gone way beyond any possible exercise of freedom of speech or expression of protest into acts of harassment and intimidation. Even now, the prime minister and the New South Wales premier are claiming that the remedy to Jew hatred is even tougher gun laws [even though Australia's are already among the toughest in the world], rather than an all-out effort to counter the Islamist extremism that justifies 'death to the infidels."

Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott 

Floral tributes outside Bondi Pavilion at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Steve Markham)

 

In the wake of the Australian pogrom of December 14, and the world's attention focused Down Under, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has made a number of verbose, sanctimonious speeches of standing with Australian Jews, of virulent antisemitism not being tolerated, of the need to tighten Australia's gun laws since the Islamist terrorists bought their four rifles and the ammunition to go with them legally, as they then proceeded on their Bondi Beach atrocity to kill 15 innocent people, from children to the elderly -- because they were Jewish. 

 

Of course this all hearks back to October 7, 2023, when Palestinian terrorists led by Hamas slithered in their thousands out of Gaza to embark on a savage killing spree complete with rape and torture, triumphantly videoing the carnage they indulged in to be shared by the world at large as a documentation  of their freedom-loving credentials. The mutilation of helpless victims, burning alive entire families sheltering in their homes, taking children and the elderly hostages, all demonstrations of the courage of 'oppressed' people.

 

When news of a Muslim man on the scene of the Bondi Beach attack spontaneously risking his life to save Jews from death and sustaining serious injuries in the process reached the attention of Palestinians and other Muslims, a deluge of hateful messages flowed toward Ahmed al Ahmed -- recuperating from surgery in hospital -- damning him for his heroism. Virulent Islamist antisemitism was brought to Australia as it was throughout the Western world with the immigration, refugee intake and illegal migration of Muslims from North Africa and the Middle East.

 

Family carry the coffin following a service for Bondi Beach mass shooting victim 10-year-old Matilda, whose last name is being withheld at the request of her family, in Sydney, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Steve Markham)

 

Their rabid Jew-hate which has led to years of escalating intimidation, threats and slander against Australian Jews fell on a receptive audience of native Australians for whom their own brand of traditional antisemitism has often been on display. One can assume that Australia's most famous export, actor and producer Mel Gibson's brand of Jew hate (and that of his father) represents the norm among a proportion of the population reflecting the average Australian. However, the level of outright raging violent threats culminating in the Bondi Beach massacre was pure Islamofascism.

 

Not one word approximating Islamism, Islamic terrorism, jihad or Muslim violence issued from the mouths of any current Australian government figures at any level. It simply isn't done. Too embarrassingly racist -- does everyone agree that Islamism represents a race? The horror of being singled out as Islamophobic; to be avoided at all cost. And if that cost is the moral underpinnings of a civilized society, the principle of equality and justice, well so be it.

 

Australia is grieving the loss of 15 of its citizens of a wide range of ages, from a ten-year-old child to two rabbis, athletic young men, husbands and wives, Holocaust survivors. Another forty people in attendance at the celebration of the first day of the Festival of Lights -- the ancient Hanukkah holiday memorializing Jewish resistance of forced 2nd Century Hellenization by Seleucid Greek conquerors -- were wounded, among them some seriously injured by the relentless gunfire targeting Australian Jews.

 

Do Jews still have a place of residence and security in Australia? Not that Australia is much different than Canada, for example, much less Belgium, France, Britain, Ireland, Germany in being captured by a large and growing infiltration of Muslims within their populations. 'Political' Islam has swept the globe. It may not reflect the greater mass of faithful in Islam, but it has demanded the world's attention, as the viciously violent minority methodically goes about its task of conquest, fundamentally in obedience to Islam's edict setting out the primary obligation of its faithful.

 

The world's oldest and most prevailing hatred of a people -- antisemitism -- marks Jews as the initial target by the Islamist horde of predators searching out their victims, including other Muslims, throughout the world. Yet it is not only Jews that are marked for eradication as representing Islam's disfavour, but all those whose other forms of  religious devotion are viewed by Islamists as insulting to Islam -- the sole religion that matters in the world. 

 

Christians the world over, Hindus and Buddhists, are all in line for the very same treatment now being meted out to Jews. Yet the world fails to act. 

 

Video, Bondi Beach Atrocity   BBC