Ambulance closures increasingly becoming the norm in the northwest
Calls for ambulances are increasing province wide and so are recruitment efforts, but the Kenora District is having a hard time keeping up with demand.
Recruitment numbers have been suffering since the Covid-19 pandemic and the closure of Confederation College’s paramedic program in Kenora and Dryden, explained Derek Hamilton, the president of CUPE 5911, the union that represents Northwest EMS staff. The Seven Generations Education Institute (SGEI) has since started its own program, but it hasn’t produced many working paramedics yet, he said.
“We have to wait years to see those paramedics come into the system because it's a two-year program,” Hamilton told the Miner and News. Right now, Kenora can’t manage to replace the paramedics who are retiring, let alone those who are leaving the profession for another, or for mental health or disability purposes.
One reason for recruitment and retention issues in the northwest is the fact that paramedics make 20 to 30 per cent less than police officers and firefighters do, Hamilton added.
“Look at the OPP, who have almost unlimited mental health benefits, whereas us, right now we have zero mental health benefits - none, zero,” he said. “We need actual mental health support, and we just haven't been able to obtain it through negotiation with KDSB at this point.”
Like in many other professions, as the generational makeup of the workforce shifts with time, Hamilton has noticed that younger paramedics have a different attitude towards employment and their work-life balance.
“Ambulance services in general have been able to almost exploit their workforce because paramedics are a group of people that care when there's no ambulances in our community,” said Hamilton. “Lots of people will work the extra hours, will work the extra overtime, will take time away from their families and everything else to try to maintain an ambulance service.”
But the younger generation has “a much healthier ability to balance their lives,” he said. And while he believes that’s definitely not a negative trait, it does mean that more people will view being a paramedic as what it is: a job, and not a higher calling.
Having staff feel like they are personally responsible for the ambulance service in their region is not sustainable, Hamilton explained.
Despite local leaders doing what they can to support frontline staff, such as keeping up with all of the best technology and training for injury prevention and reduction, “there's more injuries, there's more mental health issues,” Hamilton said. “Everybody's doing what we can, but the reality is, the system in northwestern Ontario is collapsing.”
Sioux Lookout is currently down an ambulance, leaving the 16 daily calls for service they receive on average to be handled by one ambulance, which sometimes requires staff to be moved from Dryden just so it can operate.
Back at the Kenora District Municipal Association (KDMA) meeting earlier in the year, at least one northwestern Mayor also broached the topic of EMS services being forced to close down for extended periods of time, leaving some out of the region's municipalities without an ambulance for emergencies.
The provincial and municipal governments share the financial responsibility for ambulance services, and Hamilton recognizes that it can be hard for small municipalities like the ones in northwestern Ontario to come up with the money to be competitive with other industries and the employers in other parts of the province.
“We’ve been working with our provincial counterparts to try to convince the provincial and the federal governments to increase some funding to level the playing field a bit to be able to get people to come in to come into the career and stay in the career,” but unfortunately, they haven’t made much headway, said Hamilton.
The union has had positive conversations with Kenora-Rainy River MPP Greg Rickford and his office, but “it's hard to get the provincial or federal government all in one place at once to talk about these things,” he said.
So far, to try to improve recruitment the provincial government has implemented the Stay and Learn Grant, which provides funding for students pursuing a paramedic diploma in northern and northwestern Ontario and who stay to work there after graduation. KDSB doubled down on that and is offering an education cost recovery program up to a total of $8,000 for new Northwest EMS recruits, “but we're not seeing any results from that yet, and I just think that we may be too far gone past the point that those types of strategies are going to work,” said Hamilton.
Hamilton wants residents of the Kenora region to know that Northwest EMS staff are doing everything they can to keep the ambulances up and running “so that when you call 911 and you need an ambulance somebody is coming,” he said. But they need help from all levels of government, otherwise “there's just going to be nothing because there's no plan. There's no backup, there's no somebody else to call.”
CUPE 5911 will be entering into contract renegotiations with the KDSB at the end of the year with a focus on closing the pay gap between EMS staff in southern Ontario, other first responders and Northwest EMS staff, and getting mental health coverage.
“We're going to be leaning on the public for support during the next contract negotiation because we’re going to need things and they’re going to cost money,” Hamilton concluded.
Serena Austin, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Kenora Miner and News
