ONTARIO'S HOSPITAL OVERCROWDING GETTING WORSE

NP:  After she spent five days on a stretcher in a Brampton Civic Hospital hallway because no beds were available, Ball’s story reached Queen’s Park and the Liberals promised to combat the bed shortage in the 2017 budget. In an interview days before he released the budget Thursday, Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa said “we don’t want people to be in hallways.”

But the $518 million, Ball has learned, won’t help solve a capacity crisis that has led to the province’s hospitals opening 1,100 unfunded beds. Instead, the funding will do little more than cover inflation and will not be enough to even sustain the current system, according to the Ontario Health Coalition.