Hour 3 of Ottawa Now for Mon. September 15th, 2025

For several years now, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada’s Capital has struggled to control E.R. wait times. And according to new July data from Health Quality Ontario, even the wait times for initial assessments are among the highest in the province. Our city average is 2 hours, by the way. The highest of the five local hospitals is the Queensway-Carleton Hospital, which recorded a 3.5 hour wait for initial assessments in July. Believe it or not, that is slightly down from the QCH’s near 4-hour wait times in July 2024. Is this a healthcare crisis, or the sad reality that we all have to live with? Kristy Cameron sifts through the CFRA textboard and tackles today’s Question of the Day. Meantime, you know what else has been too darn high since the wrath of COVID? If you guessed gas prices, that is definitely one of the acceptable responses. But on April 1st, when the feds scrapped the consumer portion of the Carbon Tax, consumers breathed a small sigh of relief at the gas pumps. So why have gas prices gone up again? We try to get some answers with the help of Dan McTeague in Hour 3. He is the President of Canadians for Affordable Energy. And speaking of the federal government, Canadian MPs are back in the saddle, as the Fall Session of Parliament gets underway. We get things rolling with our Political Heat Panel.