On May 29, CBC News featured a story about the Manitoba government’s recent recruitment initiative for rural paramedics. The government says it has signed 29 conditional offers from paramedics in the U.K. to backfill open positions in rural Manitoba.
MAHCP President Jason Linklater spoke with CBC about the union’s position on this external recruitment drive. Please find our full statement below:
We welcome any qualified paramedic choosing to practice in Manitoba, including these 29 U.K. paramedics. The bottom line for MAHCP is that we want to see all the recruitment and retention incentives offered to these paramedics offered to our member paramedics already employed within Shared Health. Why wouldn’t they? We have qualified medics in Manitoba who might be interested in taking a position in a hard-to-fill rural or Northern location where the pressure is greatest if they were incented to do so.
We know the U.K. paramedics will be signing return of service agreements and receiving relocation bonuses, but we have not been shown the full terms of the agreements. We are asking that the return of service agreements be made public.And these are only conditional offers. Conditional offers are not arrivals, and an arrival is not a retained, licensed, practicing paramedic in a Manitoba community. The test is how many of these 29 will still be here, in those communities, 12 and 24 months from now.
International recruitment is a useful near-term tool, and this is the right way to use it: As a bridge. But this is not a foundation. The foundation must be investing in Manitoba’s healthcare system and our own residents. The lasting fix is training paramedics here, in the communities that need them.
We are ready to work with government to turn the paramedic staffing crisis around, and we have said so consistently.
The Emergency Medical Responder to Primary Care Paramedic pathway is one of the strongest tools we have to move people up and keep them local, yet we still have not yet been told about a clear, funded route to full paramedic practice.
Education and training take time, and that is precisely why near-term recruitment and a long-term pipeline have to run together.