Thank you Leah. I represent the dispatchers at the Hamilton Ambulance dispatch Centre we serve Hamilton, Niagara, Haldimand, Norfolk and Brant county. Each day our dispatchers are responsible to ensure there is an ambulance available to every area, in essence we are there to protect 1.1 million people

Every day we are faced with thousands of split second decisions that literally make the difference between life and death, as you could imagine we are under strict guidelines and under close scrutiny. An error could cost someone their life, jeopardize a paramedic’s safety and land the dispatcher in front of a coroner’s inquest to explain their actions.

You would think a public servant with such a large responsibility would have every resources available at their fingertips. That is simply not the case. We face chronic short staffing, a high turnover, inadequate - obsolete equipment, and an over all neglect from today's government. On top of this you offer these dispatchers $20,000 less a year to perform under these conditions and you have the reason why 34 employees have left the Hamilton CACC since January 2000.

Most people could not imagine what it is like to talk to a mother trying to breath life back into her infant child, or to comfort a man who woke to find his wife of 50 years has passed away during the night - Ambulance dispatchers face this every day, but then have to ask that person to hold the line because they must then talk to the next caller who's emergency is just as important. Imagine not being able to give CPR instructions for a newborn baby because you are short staffed. These situations are unacceptable and yet happen every day in the provinces ambulance dispatch centres.

Recently a shift was four people short and a dispatcher was doing the jobs of three people. A patient died of an allergic reaction while waiting for an ambulance to arrive. The dispatcher followed all procedures and has been told so by the Ministry of Health. The dispatcher is blamed in the local paper, and the ministry never speaks up in their defense. The dispatcher worries what could happen the next time the centre is four people short.

To wrap up an audit was done of our office in fall of 2001, the IBI report gave recommendations on how the problems at our centres could be addressed. The auditors provided direction that all recommendations were to be carried out and ignoring any one of them would impact the entire project. This included more staff, state of the art technology and wage parity for the dispatchers; I assure you that until these problems are addressed THE PUBLIC IS AT RISK.

I would like to turn the mic over now to Sandy Edwards. .