A report on the Britich Columbia Ambulance Service released today recommends five options ranging from keeping the status quo to privatizing the service.
Prepared for labour minister Murray Coell, former deputy finance minister Chris Trumpy's 56-page report also considers aligning the BCAS more closely with the health care system, integrating it with police and fire departments, or developing a community based system where each jurisdiction sets a plan suitable for its needs.
In his cover letter to Coell, Trumpy noted the refusal of the union that represents the paramedics, CUPE Local 873, to participate made it difficult to address all the questions he'd been asked to examine. “As government considers the options related to effective labour relations and the structure of the ambulance service, I believe it needs to find a way to engage CUPE Local 873 and its membership in discussions.”
The union refused to participate, the Tyee reported in Nov., because it said the commission's terms of reference were too vague and Trumpy was too closely associated with the government.
In his discussion of the possibility of using the private sector to deliver ambulance services, as three maritime provinces already do, Trumpy noted, “Although the system would continue to be publicly funded such a change may be perceived as a privatization of health care.”
Andrew MacLeod is The Tyee’s Legislative Bureau Chief in Victoria. Reach him here.
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freebear
2 years ago
Private eh, here we go!
Yeah like a private ambulance service will cost less than the current on!
Just setting up the policy ground for the Liberals their private ambulance/healthcare cronies
flwrpwr
2 years ago
$$
The report also states that other than Ontario, paramedics in BC are the best compensated in Canada.
onthebay
2 years ago
one size doesn't fit all
I find it hard to believe that private ambulance would work well in BC's small, rural communities, although I'm not sure this would have even been on the radar in discussions since there's no hope north of Hope!
Curt
2 years ago
Am I surprised? NOT. As
Am I surprised? NOT. As long as the liberals are in power, we will continue to see the privatization of services, and the sell off of anything and everything we consider important to our well being.
And for those who voted for the lieberals, or didn't vote at all, what can I say?
DPL
2 years ago
a private patient carrying
a private patient carrying vehicle hangs around the Royal Jubille most of the time. They stay there because possibly they know somehting we don't know. The area is under construction and it's not that easy for any vehicle to get close to the doors of the main entrance or for that matter the Emergency are entrance. If I need an ambulance I'd want a qualified para medic and driver of the BC ambulance system hands down
Frank
2 years ago
Liberal corruption
No doubt one of the Libs has a buddy that wants to set this up. In return that Lib will get a nice desk job when he leaves politics.
G West
2 years ago
Hmm
And I thought Chris Trumpy was retiring!
Y'know, there's something pretty sleazy about a senior civil servant like Trumpy who spends his whole career in the public service taking an appointment like this after he's handed in his walking papers and acceped his public service pension.
He's a former finance ministry bureaucrat - not a judge - he shouldn't have been given the job and the fact he was says volumes about the kind of report the brillo pad that walks was looking for,
The writing was on the table for the ambulance service when the ministry refused to submit the dispute to binding arbitration and ordered them back to work.
Van Isle
2 years ago
Does anybody remember what
Does anybody remember what our ambulance service was like before the NDP brought it in, in the mid-70's? It was a joke, and this political hack is talking about bringing the same system back? If I remember right, when Bill Bennet got elected he wanted to gut the ambulance system (cuz it was a NDP idea). Fate was not on his side when the then Attorney-General (Williams, if I'm not mistaken) had a jammer in the old Vancouver court house. If it hadn't been for an ambulance just happen to go by when the emergency call had gone in, Mr. Williams would have been toast. After that incident the Socreds weren't too anxious to do away with ambulance system anymore.
G West
2 years ago
Van Isle
You're absolutely correct. The ambulance service was the private domain of a bunch of private outfits who used to compete to see who could get to big bloody accidents first - especially if there were multiple injuries and a few stiffs involved.
When they weren't answering accident calls they doubled as meat wagons and would pick up corpses from accidents where there were fatalities. In fact, they could make more money by shoving several bodies in one car than they could by picking up the injured so you know what happened when there was a choice involved.
My family had a friend who worked his way through college driving one of those old big finned late 50s early 60s Cadillac jobs and he had no training as a paramedic at all - you should have heard the stories he could tell.
BTW, I heard the same story about a former AG...I don't know if it was Allan Williams or not but I do know he was a decent fair man and a good lawyer - withal still a liberal/socred. IN those days the Premier still listened to his Attorney-General and understood that, as the top law officer in the province, that member of his cabinet was meant to be independent.
Those days are long gone now.
off-the-radar
2 years ago
the race to the bottom
privatising goverment
* screw the workers
* screw citizens and the citizens they need and have been hard won over decades.
Instead maximize profits for foreign companies with our increasing taxes and decreasing services.
Thatherite dream come true in theory and a bloody nightmare in reality.
offended
2 years ago
$2 an hour
is the pay rate for the best compensated in Canada? I don't think so. I can understand why the paramedics' union didn't want to participate after reading this.
off-the-radar
2 years ago
the new Ken Dobell?
Chris Trumpy? his name is coming up a lot lately.
Fiat lux
2 years ago
Sure thing, let's have
Sure thing, let's have private service, by all means !!!!! Nothing like it, as our American friends tell us.
Back in 1955-56 I was working in the custom furniture shop of Creswell Rickard on Granville, where the Sun building later stood.
We used to have one hour lunchbreaks in those days, and on a beautiful sunny day 3 of us went for a walk up to Broadway, where we saw a small crowd standing over somebody lying on the sidewalk, in front of what was then an umbrella store.
It was a guy who was hit by a car as he was jayrunning across Broadway. Vancouver had a private ambulance service at the time, called Metro, with ugly Cadillac station wagons, we could hear coming in the distance.
When the wagon stopped, the two attendants didn't bother to open the rear to get out a stretcher, but walked over to the victim and one of the asked:" Sir, do you have $35?".
The man was only half conscious and could only mumble, so the attendant stepped over him and started slapping his face : "Hey buddy, do you have 35 bucks?" No reply, so he went into the man's inner pocket, pulled out his wallet, took out the $35. with a dozen people watching and then they brought out the stretcher and took him away.
$35. was almost a week's wages for me at the time and having been in the country for only a year, I couldn't believe what we saw, but my friends told me it was quite common.
Now, nothing surprises me about "privatization" and as far the PPPs are concerned, what the letters mean is "Plundering the Public's Pockets" Anybody who goes for them must be a nutcase, or a crook.
And so is anybody who'd even think of privatized ambulance services, but it could be coming as the long standing plan in effect to depopulate rural areas through the withdrawing of services. They're now talking about closing our local school to force people and kids to move.
Ed Deak.
Dan the socialist
2 years ago
The report also states that
The report also states that other than Ontario, paramedics in BC are the best compensated in Canada.
=========
That is wrong. I wonder why the report would say something so misleading?
According to here BC is the lowest for the low and below average for the average. http://www.livingin-canada.com/salaries-for-ambulance-attendants-paramedics.html
Skywalker
2 years ago
Dan
BC has to be the bottom of the barrel, like for minimum wages and child poverty. It's a liberal wet dream.
Fiat lux
2 years ago
Dan, What do you expect?
Dan, What do you expect? After all we're the richest province in the richest country on Earth according to the World Bank.
How could we afford to offend our "wealth creating foreign investors" if we'd not sell them the whole caboodle?
They would be really offended if we would "price ourselves out of the marketplace" with services to the public.
It wouldn't be "efficient" at all.
Ed Deak.