Ambulances parked at St. Michael's Hospital in downtown Toronto.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
George Smitherman is calling for Toronto's paramedic and firefighting services to merge, an idea that drew a harsh rebuke from ambulance workers' representatives.
The former provincial health minister pledged Tuesday to amalgamate the command and dispatch functions of fire and EMS and to bar the latter from scaling back service during a strike. Right now, paramedics are allowed to operate at 75 per cent of regular staffing levels during a labour disruption.
The proposal is part of Mr. Smitherman's plan to improve core services such as trash pickup, policing and recreation, which he's scheduled to unveil Wednesday.
"The average response times for ambulances has grown to be more than 12 minutes," Mr. Smitherman told reporters outside a downtown EMS station. "In most cases fire trucks are on the scene in less than six minutes. Those six minutes are a precious opportunity to save lives."
Mr. Smitherman said he would strike a task force to sort out the particulars, including whether the combined service should report to a single chief or put paramedics and firefighters in the same vehicle - something he's leaning against at the moment.
While the president of the Toronto Professional Fire Fighters' Association is open to working more closely with paramedics, representatives of the city's paramedics would fight it tooth and nail.
"Why would George Smitherman commit to sending four firefighters and a half-a-million dollar pumper to a medical call when in fact he could achieve the same thing by sending two fully qualified paramedics to the call?" asked Mark Ferguson, the president of CUPE Local 416, which represents about 850 paramedics.
The vice-president of the Toronto Paramedic Association echoed that: "Paramedics and firefighters perform two very, very different jobs ... the marriage of the two would not be in the best interest of the public," said Geoff MacBride, whose advocacy organization counts 450 paramedics as voluntary members.
The TPA does, however, strongly back making paramedics 100-per-cent essential.
The paramedics' resistance to a merger is no surprise. Mr. Smitherman based his policy on a 2008 discussion paper by the Ontario Association of Fire Chiefs and the Ontario Professional Fire Fighters Association, which advocated integrating the departments and simultaneously dispatching paramedics and firefighters to life-threatening medical emergencies.
"Toronto paramedics are definitely highly skilled workers," said Ed Kennedy, president of the Toronto firefighters' union, which represents 3,000 members. "But I think there are ways that we, together, could work at delivering our services better to the citizens."
Calgary, Seattle and Winnipeg have all succeeded with combined fire and EMS departments, Mr. Smitherman said.
The 2008 discussion paper quotes Jim Brennan, Winnipeg's fire and paramedic chief, as saying that the merger is saving 10,000 ambulance calls annually, the equivalent of 10 extra ambulances or $8.5-million. He wasn't available for comment Tuesday.
It took Winnipeg a decade of bitter fighting with both unions to integrate the departments.
Mr. Smitherman said he hoped the move would save money, but that he recognized the cost of arbitrated settlements for a truly essential EMS could make the plan revenue neutral.
The firefighters' union has not decided who to endorse in the race for mayor. Mr. Kennedy said the union has endorsed only one mayoral candidate in recent history: David Miller in 2003.
CUPE Local 416 is widely expected to endorse deputy mayor Joe Pantalone.