Alberta government backtracks on EMS integration plan
Province pauses controversial strategy affecting 7 communities after fierce local opposition to fire-ambulance service splits.
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Alberta is putting its controversial integrated fire and EMS procurement strategy on pause, reversing course after communities including Lethbridge, Red Deer, St. Albert, and Strathcona County mounted fierce opposition.
Earlier this year, the province told affected cities they could either spend more money to keep their current integrated services — which in Lethbridge's case had operated for 114 years — or allow Emergency Health Services to implement cost-saving changes that could split fire departments from ambulance operations.
On Monday, Alberta's Minister of Hospital and Surgical Health Services Adriana LaGrange announced the strategy would be paused while the government works with the seven affected communities "to design a strategy that supports them and brings costs in line with provincially delivered EHS services by 2028-29."
"I really want to work with those communities because the one-size-fits-all approach is not going to work," LaGrange said Tuesday in Calgary. "We have an opportunity to ease into it a little more."
Lethbridge Mayor Blaine Hyggen called the pause "ecstatic" news, saying the city had emphasized throughout the process that integrated services, while more expensive, were sustainable with provincial support. This is the second time in two weeks LaGrange has reversed an earlier government decision — she also abandoned a rebranding of the province's paramedic service provider after criticism from unions and paramedics over staff shortages.