Norm Macdonald MLA                                              Columbia River – Revelstoke

MEDIA RELEASE

For immediate release

November 4, 2009

Macdonald speaks out against bill that imposes contract on paramedics

VICTORIA – While debating Bill 21, the Ambulance Services Collective Agreement Act, 2009, Columbia River – Revelstoke MLA Norm Macdonald spoke out strongly against the legislation that will impose a contract on ambulance paramedics ending a seven month long dispute.

Paramedics have been bargaining for improved working conditions, increased on-call and stand-by pay, and improvements to the challenges of recruitment and retention of rural members.

“Paramedics are the people we depend upon at the most difficult times of our lives,” said Macdonald in the Legislature.  “We depend on paramedics when a child is choking.  We call when a senior is having heart attack.  We call after a motor vehicle accident.

“We depend on these people to come and do things that we are unable to do.  At that moment there is nobody more important than the person that comes and provides comfort and uses their skill to help somebody that’s injured.”

Macdonald spoke passionately about the work done by rural paramedics in his communities, speaking specifically about the challenges faced by paramedics in Revelstoke, Golden and Invermere.

“The part of this debate that I am most familiar with is the rural paramedic issue.  Members of the Opposition and local governments through the UBCM have raised this issue with government over the past four years but those concerns have been completely ignored.”

Macdonald has watched as paramedics have left small rural communities to move to larger centres to work.  Many paramedics have simply left the profession because the working conditions are so poor.

 “I know that the Opposition will continue to fight on this issue, that we will do what we need to do to get the BC Ambulance Service so that it works not only in rural British Columbia but in all parts of the province,” continued Macdonald.

“I want to say again to paramedics just how much respect I have for the work that paramedics have done.  I think this piece of legislation treats paramedics with a manner of contempt that most British Columbians find offensive.”