The mayor of Terrace Bay says the issue of bringing back North of Superior EMS service levels in the region has been put to rest.
Council voted nine to four at Monday night's meeting in favour of administration conducting a report on bringing back EMS services levels in the district back to those seen in 2008. Increasing EMS stand-by hours back to those levels could cost taxpayers $56,000 a year unless the province promises to cover half that amount. The ambulance service is already projecting an $800,000 shortfall to its $19.6 million budget.
Terrace Bay Mayor Michael King said he was glad with the decision the majority of council had made.
“Unless crews are out on calls then there will always be an ambulance crew essentially available in our communities,” King told media after the decision was made. “Right now we had two out of four stations closed about half of the time. Now four out of four stations will be open all of the time.”
But King wasn’t the only one interested in council’s decision.
Around seven members of the Canadian Auto Workers union rallied outside of city hall. Those who attended the rally were concerned that discussions at council about changing paramedics’ stand-by hours could mean a reduction in shift work.
Kari Jefford, president of the CAW Local 229, said they attempted to have a deputation but weren’t successful so they decided to hold a rally instead. Not long ago union members were fighting to keep the 14 district EMS stations open.
Now that those stations appear to be staying open for the time being, Jefford said all they want to do is ensure that on call and on site hours stay the same.
“It would be hard for anyone to work mandatory on call time for just over $3 an hour,” Jefford said. “It’s a tough struggle but our folks are dedicated to the job. They put their time in as part-time to maintain paramedical services in the district. It is just really important that we find some sort of balance. We were able to maintain our stations and now they are looking at moving more of those hours, returning to on call hours opposing to closing or rotating a station.”
Although councillors were in favour of bringing back services levels to the region, there was some debate on why the responsibility fell on the municipality when some felt that it should be taken care by the province.
Northwood Coun. Mark Bentz voiced his concern that the city was footing the bill for what was essentially a provincial issue.
“At some point you really got to start to look at this quantitatively,”Bentz said. “I hope this gives us a bit of insight of what is in our future because costs aren’t going down and the demand will just keep going to going up.”
