It appears the City of Guelph will be taking over ambulance services once the current contract with Royal City Ambulance expires at the end of this year.
Lyle Quan, Guelph’s Deputy Fire Chief, made that announcement on July 18 at an event to recognize a new ambulance station in Rockwood.
The service would come under the umbrella of the city, although it will still be run as “a stand-alone entity,” Quan said. He noted the city already owns all of the ambulances and equipment, so it is in a good position to take over the service.
Quan said during discussions about the pending conclusion of the current agreement with Royal City, Guelph officials were faced with three possible solutions:
– renegotiate with Royal City for a two-year agreement;
– tender the service to other private companies; or
– take over the service itself.
Quan personally recommended option three.
Local ambulance service is run by Guelph, although it is co-owned by the city and county and falls under their joint social services committee.
Concerns about annual cost overruns as high as $400,000 had the city discussing re-tendering the service as early as 2005. At that time Wellington County attempted to take back the authority for land ambulance service, which it delegated to Guelph around 2000, but was denied by the province.
County councillor Gord Tosh, chairman of the social services committee that oversees land ambulance, confirmed on Tuesday the committee does plan to take over the service at year’s end.
“If someone else is going to take it over, it should be us,” Tosh said of the thought process.
The decision was formally made by Guelph council last month, and has since received verbal support from several mayors in Wellington County.
Tosh acknowledged the committee has tried to keep word of the decision fairly quiet in order to keep staff from worrying about their jobs, but he stressed the committee will not make any layoffs.
“The plan is to not change staff at all,” he said, noting the city and county have invested a lot of money in training. “We want to make sure these people stay.”
In fact, Tosh added the committee hopes to promote people from within to fill new positions that will likely be created by the committee’s takeover.
There are no plans to split the service between the city and county, Tosh said, because the province has mandated that Guelph and Wellington remain one area for ambulance service.
But one difficulty in the takeover in 2009 could be dealing with two separate unions, Tosh said. Two unions have existed since Guelph took over ambulance service, and Royal City made no attempt to standardize the two, he added.
