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Mike Tierney, the hospital’s vice-president of clinical programs, said that although emergency room wait times have seen “steady improvement” in the past few years, beds remain in short supply.

“We’re on the right track, but access to in-patient beds and emergency department wait times are still an issue, not just in Ottawa but across the province, across the country and in many parts of the world,” Tierney said, noting that emergency department wait times are “tightly linked” to hospital occupancy, which at The Ottawa Hospital normally reaches 100 per cent or more.

Hospitals in Ontario are the least funded and have the fewest beds per capita of all provinces in Canada, according to the health coalition.

“The cuts are just biting deeper and deeper every year, and at this point Ottawa is really the ground zero for the cuts across Ontario,” said Natalie Mehra, executive director of the advocacy group.

“Our hospitals cannot sustain any more cuts. In Ottawa, the evidence is very clear that the hospitals … need more beds and staff to relieve the crisis level of overcrowding they face.”

Mehra said coalition members are targeting Chiarelli on Friday because they see him as “the most susceptible to public pressure” among Ottawa MPPs, since he won by the narrowest margin in the 2014 election. The group has already held numerous protests to demand that Premier Kathleen Wynne stop the cuts.

Lee and Nancy Parker said the public doesn’t show a strong enough reaction to the hospital cuts, partly because it doesn’t have a direct effect on most people — until something goes wrong.

“It’s something I thought I’d never see, especially in Ontario and in Canada,” said Lee. “It’s just a shame that there’s not more public outcry.”

afeibel@ottawacitizen.com

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