With about 60 days to go to meet their target, local paramedics say they’ve been getting solid response to a petition calling for paramedics to be part of the same labour legislation as police and firefighters.
The “Your Province, Your Paramedics” petition was issued Jan. 9 under the Recall and Initiative Act. It asks the province to amend the Fire and Police Services Collective Bargaining Act to put ambulance paramedics on par with firefighters and police officers and treat them as an essential emergency service.
That would mean they’d lose the right to strike, but they also couldn’t be locked out. If contract talks break down, the issues would go directly to binding arbitration.
“The support has been overwhelming,” Cole Godfrey, a paramedic with the Gibsons BC Ambulance Service station and one of the principals with the campaign, told Coast Reporter. “Once we lay [the issue] out, people are completely in support of it.”
Godfrey also said a lot of people they’ve talked to were surprised to learn that paramedics aren’t already considered the same as police or firefighters.
The initiative petition rules require signatures to be gathered in person, and Godfrey said people should expect to see the paramedics out in the community during their off hours asking people to sign. They recently set up a table at Sunnycrest Mall in Gibsons and plan to be at the Independent Grocer in Sechelt on Feb. 12.
B.C. paramedics walked out in 2009 before being legislated back to work, and Godfrey said the petition was motivated by some of the issues that are still lingering after that strike.
“Since then the union and the employer have just been in constant negotiations,” Godfrey said. “Nothing’s changed for rural retention of paramedics. In Gibsons we have a hard time keeping people locally. Most of the people on the Coast are part time. Turnover’s high, it’s hard to retain these people. More than wages, we just want to have a constant service in the province.”
The paramedics need about 3,700 signatures from Sunshine Coast residents. Overall they need to get 10 per cent of the registered voters in each of B.C.’s 85 ridings to sign by April 10 for the petition to go to the next step, which would be either the government agreeing to the change or putting it to a referendum.
The only successful initiative petition in B.C. was the one that triggered the 2011 referendum on the HST, but Godfrey said given the public support he’s seen so far, he’s confident they can become the second.
Elections BC said that if the paramedics’ petition succeeds, the verification and response periods will be delayed until after the May 9 provincial election.
