For a news conference re: ambulance dispatch

Queen’s Park media studio, Nov. 7, 2002

Good morning. My name is Leah Casselman. I’m the president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union. I’m here on behalf of 100,000 Ontario public sector workers to talk about this government’s ongoing bungling of the life-and-death issue of ambulance dispatch service.

With me today I have Patrick Fry-Smith, an ambulance dispatcher with the Hamilton Central Ambulance Communication Centre; Sandy Edwards, an ambulance dispatcher with the Oshawa CACC; and of course you know Howard Hampton, leader of the Ontario New Democrats.

Before I begin I want to underscore that both Patrick and Sandy will be commenting on their wages and working conditions in their roles as union officials. Patrick is vice-president of OPSEU Local 201; Sandy is secretary-treasurer of our Local 302 and the OPSEU chair of the Ministry of Health employee relations committee dealing with ambulance dispatch.

Patrick and Sandy will be letting you know exactly what it’s like to work in an ambulance dispatch centre that is under the control of the Ontario Ministry of Health.

Despite government announcements you may have heard, the ambulance dispatch system remains in crisis. Call volumes per dispatcher are too high. In a city like Toronto, where ambulance dispatch is operated by the city, dispatchers handle 4,200 calls a year on average. In Hamilton, where I live, dispatchers handle over 6,000, and sometime 6,300 calls per year. The workload is 50 per cent higher!

And as Patrick and Sandy will tell you, this is not your run-of-the-mill job.

People’s lives depend on this job. When you have that heart attack, when you are in that car crash, the actions of people like Patrick and Sandy could decide whether you live or die.

This job is stressful by nature even when it is properly staffed. When it is not, it is absolute murder.

Some municipalities are frustrated by the Ministry of Health’s apparent disregard for the lives of its citizens. They’ve called on the province to download responsibility for ambulance dispatch to the municipal level.

I can understand their frustration. It is very difficult to watch someone else mismanage a service that is so vital to the health and safety of our communities. The temptation to just “do it yourself” is very strong.

However, downloading would give us a more fragmented system. It is not what we need. Ontarians expect a seamless ambulance service from one end of the province to another. A high degree of provincial control can ensure that.

In any case, the real problem facing ambulance dispatch is not the governance model. It is underfunding.

The government knows this. Last year, it commissioned a consulting firm called IBI Group to do a study of the ambulance dispatch centre in Hamilton.

When they received it, they hid it from the public. They said they could not release the report because it would have implications for bargaining between OPSEU and the government in the Ontario Public Service.

The IBI report told the government, in no uncertain terms, to hire more people and pay them more. This was – and this is a direct quote from the report – “To reduce the high staff turnover and attract qualified candidates.”

The report said that each dispatcher should handle no more than 4,200 calls per year.

Obviously, the IBI report’s recommendations are equally relevant for all 11 provincial ambulance dispatch centres and our air ambulance dispatch centre.

The government recognized this when, after what felt like endless delays, it announced recently that it will post 66 positions. This includes 47 ambulance dispatchers plus trainers and other staff who are crucial to making the system work.

This is a good move. It was very long in coming. It represents an increase in staffing of over 25 per cent. Currently there are 243 workers in the system.

Nonetheless, two problems remain.

The first is the government’s failure to implement all the recommendations of the IBI report.

The new staffing levels will bring call volumes down, but not to a manageable level. There will still be at least 4,500 calls per dispatcher per year in Hamilton. Workers in Simcoe County and York Region will still handle 5,800.

Secondly, the government has still failed to address the wage issue. Ambulance dispatchers in the public service earn about $44,000 a year. Ambulance dispatchers in Toronto earn $10,000 more than that. The Ministry of Health and Long Term Care funds 100 per cent of the wages of Toronto ambulance dispatchers. Why can’t the province pay its own dispatchers at least as much?

The Mississauga Fire Service will be hiring dispatchers in January. Their rate of pay is $68,000 a year after three years. Their call volume is less than half what dispatchers in the public service endure.

Who wouldn’t leave a stressful underpaid job to move to one with less stress and more money?

Ambulance dispatchers are leaving the system now. They will continue to leave until the Ontario government solves the problem of this deadly wage gap.

The job of ambulance dispatcher is not unlike that of an air traffic controller, a fighter pilot, or a race car driver. It’s all about being in control in a crisis situation. There is no way to get good at it except through experience.

Unfortunately, here’s what is happening: trained but inexperienced staff come to work for the Ministry of Health; through experience, they become very good at their jobs; and then, at the first opportunity, they move on. Basically, the Ontario Public Service has become the “farm team” for all other emergency dispatch services.

This situation, which the government is not addressing, does a permanent disservice to the citizens of communities like Mississauga, Oshawa, Hamilton, Barrie, and hundreds of other communities in every corner of the province.

I am calling on the government to fix this problem now.

The OPSEU collective agreement for the Ontario Public Service contains a mechanism for adjusting the wages of OPSEU members who are wrongly paid for the job classification they are in. It’s called the Joint System Subcommittee.

Six months ago, when we were seven weeks in to a bitter strike, Management Board Chair David Tsubouchi made a commitment to me, face to face, that he would work with us to make the committee work. So far, he has done nothing to uphold his promise. I am calling on him to do exactly that, and to do it now.

What is at stake is not only whether Patrick or Sandy, who save lives every day, are being treated fairly. What is at stake are the lives of all of our friends and loved ones.

Our billboard campaign, which starts in Hamilton on November 11, will emphasize exactly that, as you can see by the reproduction here.

Have lives already been lost because of the current situation? The answer is yes.

Will more lives be lost in the future, even with new hirings? The answer is yes.

I’d like now to turn the microphone over to Patrick Fry-Smith to let you know what it’s like to work in a CACC under the existing conditions.