Rural ambulance shortages hit critical level

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This article was published 10/02/2025 (238 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The NDP was elected 16 months ago promising to fix health care, but rural ambulance wait times and staffing shortages are worsening, says the Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals.

“There’s a lot of paramedics who don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel. They thought something good was going to happen and it hasn’t materialized,” said Jason Linklater, president of the MAHCP.

Rural ambulances in 2024 were out of service, on average, almost 30,000 hours every month due to staffing, a 400 per cent increase since 2020, according to freedom of information requests the union released Monday.

Call volumes increased 64 per cent since 2018 across the four health regions. The Northern Health Region has seen the highest call-volume increase (85 per cent).

Response times increased year-over-year in Prairie Mountain (12 per cent) and Northern Health (39 per cent) from November 2023 to November 2024.

Most response times were over 50 minutes in Prairie Mountain and Interlake-Eastern health regions — well above the under-30-minute target, the union said.

The provincial budget called for the hiring of 90 new paramedics but by the end of 2024, but only 14 were in place, according to the union.

An estimated 28 per of Shared Health paramedic positions are vacant — more than 200 of nearly 800 positions — a slight improvement from 30 per cent in January 2023, the union said Monday.

“They’re nowhere near where things need to be. Manitoba needs to train and hire around 100 paramedics a year for the next five years to stabilize rural emergency medical services,” Linklater said.

Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara called the rural paramedic statistics “very concerning” and said they are the result of more than seven years of Progressive Conservative government.

“I think it really paints just how bleak the picture of health care under the PCs was. Their approach really had massive consequences,” the minister said in an interview Monday.

The PCs closed 23 rural emergency medical stations, cut millions in rural health care spending, froze wages and “pushed out over 90 rural paramedics from the front lines of our health-care system,” Asagwara said.

“Over two terms of government, the PCs refused to bargain and refused to pay them what they deserve and froze their wages. That damages our ability to retain, recruit and train over many years. We’re doing the work to dig ourselves out of the hole the PCs created.”

Rural Manitobans are waiting longer for emergency medical services and more ambulances are sitting idle as paramedic staffing shortages remain at a critical level, say the allied health care professionals who have been without a contract for 10 months.

“Without those employment contracts in place, you’re not going to be able to retain people, never mind recruit,” Linklater said.

“Nobody’s coming to a province that doesn’t have employment contracts in place.”

Within the province, City of Winnipeg paramedic wages are 3.5 per cent higher than Shared Health wages for rural paramedics, the MAHCP said.

After criticizing the PCs for dragging their feet in negotiating new health-care contracts, the NDP doesn’t appear to be pushing the employer to get a deal done, Linklater said, noting MAHCP members have given the union a strike mandate.

“I think that was the impression most people in health care got was that help was on the way,” he said.

PC health critic Kathleen Cook said the NDP isn’t keeping its No. 1 campaign promise to fix health care.

“The NDP campaigned almost solely on health care and said they knew how to fix it,” Cook said Monday.

“I think it shows a real disconnect between what the NDP are saying and what front-line health care workers — particularly paramedics — are experiencing in Manitoba.”

The province has been presented with solutions to the problem, such as increasing mobile paramedic training seats in rural Manitoba and providing housing and accommodations for paramedics in under-served communities, Cook said.

“This is a very high priority. If you live in rural Manitoba, this can quite literally be a matter of life or death having ambulances running on the road, fully staffed with paramedics,” she said.

Asagwara said the province has made “tangible investments,” including $16 million to staff a third ambulance stationed in Brandon and funded 16 additional training seats at Red River College Polytech for advanced care paramedics to work in rural and northern Manitoba, but there’s “no silver bullet.”

]carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca