The Canadian ER Closures Dataset

ERstat continuously tracks emergency-room closures, reopenings and service disruptions across every Canadian province, from official health-authority sources. No government or agency publishes this as one national record. If you are a researcher, journalist or student, this page is the canonical place to access and cite it.

What the open dataset contains

Free for non-commercial use under CC BY-NC 4.0 with attribution to erstat.ca. Full event-level history, wait-time time series and bulk export are available under a commercial licence.

How to access it

ChannelFormatBest for
JSON API (free key)JSONApps, dashboards, live analysis
GitHub archiveCSVResearch, coursework, spreadsheets
Zenodo (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21853002)CSVAcademic citation, archival record
Embeddable widget (no key)HTMLNewsrooms & community sites
Commercial licenceJSON / bulkHistory, time series, commercial products

How to cite this dataset

In news copy, a visible link is all we ask: "according to data from ERstat". For academic work:

APA

ERstat. (2026). Canadian ER closures and service disruptions [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21853002

MLA

"Canadian ER Closures and Service Disruptions." ERstat, 2026, erstat.ca/data. Accessed 2026-08-08.

BibTeX

@misc{erstat_closures,
  author = {{ERstat}},
  title  = {Canadian ER Closures and Service Disruptions},
  year   = {2026},
  doi    = {10.5281/zenodo.21853002},
  url    = {https://erstat.ca/data},
  note   = {Accessed 2026-08-08}
}

The DOI resolves to the latest archived version on Zenodo; each monthly snapshot is preserved as its own citable version.

Methodology in brief

Statuses come from official health-authority publications and hospital announcements, normalized into one national schema and refreshed continuously. Coverage began in February 2026. For per-province detail on which health systems publish live waits (and which do not), see the transparency page.