Mayor turns on lights, sirens in urgent call to province for more ambulances, paramedics

More emergency vehicles and paramedics, along with steps to ease Winnipeg’s drug crisis, are urgently needed to address persistently long waits for ambulances, Mayor Scott Gillingham says.

“Nothing is going to change until we get more staff and more resources or reduce the calls for service. And, until the addiction crisis is dealt with head-on, those calls for service are going to continue…. Our paramedics are exhausted. Our firefighters are exhausted and we need more resources,” said Gillingham.

The comments follow data on how long it takes the first ambulance to arrive at the scene of the highest priority “lights-and-sirens” calls. In 2025, 90 per cent of those Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service responses arrived within 19:27.

That counts the period of time from when a call is answered at the 911 communications centre to the time an ambulance arrives at the scene.

That response time has far exceeded a WFPS target of 8:59 for several years. It reached 19:37 in 2024, 19:47 in 2023 and 21:52 in 2022.

That’s up from 16:55 in 2020, 16:24 in 2019 and 15:24 in 2018.

Gillingham noted he and WFPS Chief Christian Schmidt have asked Shared Health, a provincial agency, to fund at least eight more ambulances and about 120 more full-time paramedic positions over the next four years to help speed up service.

“The City of Winnipeg has grown by 80,000 people in the last few years and we have not added the… needed amount of ambulances and paramedics to deal with that growth,” he said.

“Added to that is the drug and addiction crisis that’s playing out on our streets.”

WFPS said it now responds to about 27 overdose calls each day, which strains its available resources.

The mayor said more detox beds, rapid access to addictions medicine clinics and mental-health supports are needed.

He also repeated his call for an alternative to traditional emergency responses.

“We also need to establish a fourth emergency service so that police officers and firefighters and paramedics are not having to respond to calls that are (to) check well-being and… mental-health calls,” he said.

The city has hired a consultant to create a Winnipeg Community Crisis Response Service. Gillingham hopes to receive a final report by the end of June.

The time it takes most Winnipeg ambulances to respond to urgent calls has slightly improved since 2022, said Ryan Sneath, WFPS deputy chief of paramedic operations and training.

Sneath credits that improvement to changes in the priority system WFPS uses to determine the response to emergency calls. The traditional system divided calls into just two categories, where “priority one” calls were emergencies that required lights-and-sirens responses and “priority two” were non-life-threatening situations.

In 2025, the service switched to a five-level priority system, which sends crews out with lights and sirens to fewer calls.

However, Sneath noted the wait is still much longer than the target.

“It’s been a problem for a long time….With increasing call volumes, that obviously puts overwhelming stress on both fire operations and paramedic operations…. There’s only so many efficiencies we can create within our system before we have to add additional resources,” he said.

A union leader who represents Winnipeg paramedics said front-line staff are frustrated by the delays.

“I can say our members tell us often that it’s too long. When someone’s calling for an ambulance and it’s a high-acuity call… seconds matter,” said Kyle Ross, president of the Manitoba Government and General Employees’ Union.

“If you can’t get someone there on time, the outcomes change. It’s frustrating”

Ross said staff are rushing to keep up with high call volumes, while frequent calls to resuscitate people experiencing drug overdoses add to the stress.

“They’re burning out, there’s no down time. They don’t get the opportunity to recover from very difficult calls,” he said.

Winnipeg’s integrated fire-paramedic system allows firefighter paramedics to begin providing care to patients, usually several minutes before the first ambulance arrives.

WFPS data shows 90 per cent of responses by the first on-scene firefighter paramedic to a top-priority medical call happened within 9:42 in 2025. That number hovered between 9:18 and 10:41 each year since 2018.

“The city has been warned about this years ago…. These aren’t surprises, they’re ignored warnings…. The system is under-resourced and conditions have only worsened,” said Adam Smithson, treasurer of the United Fire Fighters of Winnipeg.

Smithson said the service should aim for that response to happen within six to eight minutes.

The union has called for more staff for years, he noted.

“Response times matter because seconds count in emergencies and we continue to lag behind,” he said.

joyanne.pursaga@freepress.mb.ca

X: @joyanne_pursaga