Though recent media attention has focused on hospital acute care bed shortages in Ontario, media in all provinces have reported similar stories of overcrowded emergency departments, bed shortages, emergency patients stored in hallways, TV lounges, and even waiting rooms, for many hours or day.

These reports are largely substantiated by data from the Canadian Institute on Health Information and the OECD, which show that despite Canada having one of the most expensive universal health care systems in the OECD, it rated only 25th out of 29 in the number of practicing physicians (proportionate to population), and 27th out of 27 (dead last) in number of available acute care beds in 2015. It also ranked last of all its OECD cohorts in measurements of wait times for specialist care and access to health care (Commonwealth Fund-CIHI).