Ontario adds 300 new spaces in paramedic college programs, 18 more spots coming to Conestoga College

In the hopes of getting more ambulances on the road, colleges across Ontario will get 300 new spaces in their paramedic programs, Minister of Health Sylvia Jones announced Thursday.

“We want to make it as easy as possible for Ontario students who are looking to have a career in emergency services to access the world-class training offered at our colleges,” Jones said.

Niko Georgiadis, chair of the CUPE Ambulance Committee of Ontario (CACO) says the move is a good start to help with healthcare staffing shortages.

"We need to see proactive measures like this moving forward as opposed to doing a one-time thing," Georgiadis said.

LOCAL PICTURE

As part of the initiative, Conestoga College in Kitchener will offer 18 new spaces in its paramedic program. Typically there would be 42 in the class, but this fall, 60 students will get the chance to wear the stripes.

Dave Bryant, co-vice president of CUPE Local 5191, which represents Region of Waterloo paramedics, says while he is glad the province recognizes the need for more paramedics, more needs to be done to help with the recruitment process, particularly locally.

"The Region of Waterloo... we're competing with other bigger services like Toronto, Peel Region, that sort of thing, which is difficult for retention and recruitment locally," Bryant said.

'THE FIRST STEP'

Similarly, while CACO also welcomes Thursday's announcement it says it’s not a long-term solution.

"That's obviously the first step. It's just how do we move forward and make sure that we can help solve the staffing crisis in the future," Georgiadis said. "We need the province to come up with a staffing strategy that identifies paramedic vacancy rates across the province and determines how many paramedics we need in the next two years, five years, ten years."

The health minister says the province is spending $51 million over three years to hire emergency department staff dedicated to the transfer of patients from ambulances to relieve paramedic offload delays.

Bryant remains hopeful the Region of Waterloo will see an increase in the number of paramedics serving the area but says it will be a long road ahead.

"It is going to be an ever going struggle," he said. "We're keeping our head above water for now, so we just need to keep doing that and like I said, we just need to keep adding more and more paramedics and doing what we're doing."

A spokesperson for Conestoga College says the school is committed to supporting workforce needs and plans to graduate up to 108 paramedics over the next two years. Since it's a two-year program, those number are likely to increase in future.

With files from CTV News Barrie.