Ambulance New Brunswick has told a committee of MLAs that it has never taken an ambulance out of service because of a lack of bilingual paramedics.

The comment by Medavie's vice-president for Ambulance New Brunswick, Matt Crossman, contradicted Progressive Conservative politicians who have blamed ambulance delays on bilingual hiring requirements.

"We would never take an ambulance out of service for language," he told the legislature's Crown corporations committee. "In fact, we exhaust every call-out list across the province to fill a shift."

Crossman was responding to a question from Progressive Conservative MLA Stewart Fairgrieve, who said he was aware of "speculation" that vacant bilingual-designated positions were to blame for parked ambulances.
 Other Tories, including Premier Blaine Higgs, have said in recent months that the legal requirement for each two-person paramedic crew to provide bilingual service was the reason many ambulances were idle.

Fairgrieve commented Tuesday that "in reality that would be a very rare circumstance" and asked Crossman if he agreed.

'Music to my ears'

 

After Crossman did agree, the Carleton MLA said Crossman's answer matched his experience in his part of the province.

"I don't recall circumstances where an ambulance would have had to have gone out of service for anything other than mechanical reasons," Fairgrieve said.

He added: "I think Ambulance New Brunswick is doing a good job in that regard. The fact that you said 'never' is music to my ears."

People's Alliance Leader Kris Austin, who has also linked ambulance delays to bilingual requirements, did not challenge Crossman's comments during his own questioning of ANB officials.
Last year, Higgs said in an interview that relaxing bilingual hiring standards would address delays.

"Is it better to have no ambulance, or is it better to have an ambulance that will serve your needs and be there, and do what it can to provide that service?" he told Radio-Canada.

In December, the PC government announced a plan to relax bilingual hiring requirements in some regions of the province, as proposed by a labour arbitrator's ruling.

But a month later the Tories abandoned that plan and instead directed Ambulance New Brunswick to create "float teams" of unilingual paramedics to fill gaps until bilingual paramedics could be hired.

Recruitment difficult 

 

Government lawyers have also argued in a judicial review of the labour ruling that backing away from bilingual requirements would violate the Official Languages Act and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Austin told reporters he didn't believe Crossman's answer on bilingualism but didn't challenge it during the committee session because the float team concept will resolve the issue.

"Directly, he may be correct," he said. "Indirectly, I think there's much more to it."

Austin said unilingual paramedics who couldn't get full-time work had been reluctant to temporarily replace bilingual employees in another province. Hiring unilingual paramedics into permanent float-team positions would resolve that, he said.

After the session wrapped up, Fairgrieve said he raised the issue because he "wanted some clarity" about out-of-service ambulances and many constituents had asked him about it.

"There's a lot of misconception about that amongst the public and my line of questioning was to bring clarity to that," he said.

He said he believed the officials "based on what they had to say, based on my own experience, based on what I've seen in my region. I can only speak for my region but yeah, I would believe that."

Asked if he thought Higgs would believe it, he told reporters, "you'd have to ask the leader that question."

He wouldn't say if he thought the answers would put the issue to rest politically.

"It was a pretty clear answer," he said.

Crossman said the main impact of bilingualism on staffing has been on the recruitment of paramedics from other provinces. He said the heated debate over the hiring requirement creates a perception among potential recruits "that it's a difficult situation to walk into."

Even so, Richard Losier, the CEO of Medavie Health Services New Brunswick, which oversees the ambulance service, told the committee that with several training programs underway, the organization sees "the light at the end of the tunnel" in terms of hiring.