BARRHEAD - Town of Barrhead councillors will soon be able to voice their concerns about the state of the ambulance service and their belief that local fire services, as a result, are being forced to pick up the slack.
Chief administrative officer Edward LeBlanc told councillors during their April 11 meeting that he has talked with the president of Alberta Municipalities (AM) president and St. Albert mayor Cathy Heron and has arranged a 20-minute virtual meeting (most likely as part of an upcoming council meeting) to discuss their concerns about how often Barrhead Regional Fire Services (BRFS) is called upon to respond to medical assistance calls.
AM represents Alberta's summer villages, villages, cities, towns and specialized municipalities and acts as advocates for their members lobbying the provincial and federal governments on issues of importance to their members.
For over a year, councillors have voiced concerns that the province was using municipal fire departments to supplement EMS due to inadequate resources in the Alberta Health Services (AHS) ambulance service.
Council has also voiced its concern about firefighters' mental health and potentially losing volunteers through burnout or employers deciding not to allow their staff to leave work to respond to calls. Council also has expressed several times that if local fire departments, such as the BRFS, continue to be called upon to supplement ambulance services, then the province should fairly compensate municipalities footing the bill for a service Alberta Health Services (AHS) should be providing.
One of the resolutions council has approved over that time is to ask AM to lobby the provincial government for improvements in the ambulance service, especially in rural communities and for the province to compensate municipalities adequately for medical first responder service.
LeBlanc suggested after council meets with the AM president, they may want to consider rescinding the motion.
"It is one of AM's hot topics," he said, noting they have two committees working on the file. "Our motion is not new to AM and they will continue to work on the issue regardless."
So far in 2023 to the end of March, BRFS has responded to 52 medical or ambulance assistance calls, accounting for 214.75 firefighter hours or roughly 57 per cent of firefighter time.
