Arbitration baffling, says EMS boss

The head of emergency services for an eastern Ontario municipality is dumbfounded by the labour and operations quagmire the City of Ottawa finds itself in over a paramedic deployment model.

“I’m totally baffled,” said Michel Chrétien, emergency services director for the United Counties of Prescott and Russell.

Prescott-Russell is directly impacted by an arbitrator’s recent decision that compels the Ottawa Paramedic Service to reinstate a 30-minute no-response buffer at the end of shifts.

Ottawa paramedics had the buffer until provincial investigators, prompted by complaints from Prescott-Russell about its ambulances being dispatched into the city, told the Ottawa service to change the local deployment model. The service eliminated the 30-minute buffer on March 3.

Provincial rules say the closest ambulance must be dispatched to a call, regardless of municipal boundaries.

The city’s buffer was originally put in place to provide enough time for paramedics to return their ambulances and have them refreshed for the next shift. Eliminating the buffer means paramedics could be dispatched right up until the end of their shifts, which has resulted in more overtime.

The union took the city to arbitration over the end of the 30-minute buffer and won.

Prescott-Russell reported improvements in the three months since the city axed the buffer. There have been fewer peaks when Prescott-Russell paramedics are being dispatched into Ottawa, Chrétien said.

With the 30-minute buffer likely returning in Ottawa, “we’re going backwards again,” he said.

Chrétien said he wrote to the province after the labour award was released on July 7. He wants to know how a collective agreement matter can override provincial regulations.

If that’s the case, then maybe it’s time to get “creative” with the collective agreement in Prescott-Russell and include a provision preventing paramedics from responding to calls in Ottawa, Chrétien said. It all comes down to funding.

It would take more money to add more paramedics and more ambulances to Ottawa roads, reducing the number of times outlying municipalities are covering Ottawa’s rural areas when city crews are pulled closer to the core.

Nothing forces the city to reimburse neighbouring municipalities for ambulance coverage.

Chrétien recently billed the Ottawa Paramedic Service about $1 million for calls his medics handled in the city last year. In his calculation, the total cost to Prescott-Russell was $1,042,824 for 955 calls. The net cost, considering there were calls in Prescott-Russell handled by Ottawa paramedics, was $955,000, he said.

The invoice is largely symbolic, since Chrétien doesn’t expect to receive any money from the Ottawa Paramedic Service, which has already told him the city won’t pay.