Record Funding Will Provide Impetus for More Active Development of Canadian EMS

The Canadian EMS sector will receive a major impetus for growth due to the long-awaited decision from the national government to spend an additional CAD$200 billion in healthcare over the next decade. 

Of these, a significant amount of funds will be allocated for the needs of the country’s EMS. 

The Reasons Behind Underfunding 

As in most other developed nations, the pandemic and its consequences have revealed some major weaknesses of the Canadian EMS such as labor shortages and inefficient organization, which sparked serious criticism and concerns from local patient communities and public representatives.  

According to them, one of the reasons for this was chronic underfunding of the country’s national EMS and healthcare, which has been a typical problem for Canada in the last several years.  

Still, according to experts in the Canadian CBC paper, while the costs of healthcare and EMS have risen in recent years, the quality of services provided has declined. An example of this is the ongoing decline of the number of hospital beds per capita in Canada, which has been dropping steadily since 1984 – the year the Canada Health Act, one of the major legal acts, regulating the country’s EMS and healthcare sectors, was adopted.  

The situation is also complicated by the lack of hospital beds in the country, including in emergency departments, in comparison to the majority of other developed and even emerging nations, as well as the planned exodus from the profession and retirement of up to 25% of Canadian medical personnel, including those employed in EMS. 

Funding from the Federal Government 

Although the organization of EMS in Canada is largely a provincial/territorial responsibility, the bulk of its funding has been traditionally provided by the central government. According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), approximately 70% of the overall expenditures for EMS in Canada come from the federal government. 

In recent years, local authorities have requested more funding from the official Ottawa due to the pandemic demanding to cover more of their costs for both healthcare and EMS. In the meantime, the federal government was not ready for large increases, simultaneously insisting on the implementation of broader control over the spending of these funds. 

Still, there is a high possibility that the sides have been able to find a consensus. 

Where Will These Allocated Funds Go? 

The increase in funding will contribute to the improvement of the current situation with the provision of EMS in Canada and will allow the country to better deal with other challenges, including care for the rapidly aging population and staff shortages.

According to Statistics Canada, about 870,000 people over the age of 85 are currently living in Canada. In addition, there are more than 2.1 million people in the country (with 39 million population) between the ages of 75 and 85. It is predicted, that by 2050 the number of people aged 85 will grow to 2.7 million, which will put additional pressure on both the EMS and healthcare sectors of the country.  

It is planned, that the allocated of these funds will allow us to better deal with the ever-growing staff shortages in the sector, which have recently reached historic highs, being the reason for record waiting hours in some emergency departments of the country and even deaths of people whose families said they could have lived had they received timely care. 

Part of these plans is also raising the efficiency of the sector by the reduction of the number of hospitalized patients, and ensuring their assistance by caregivers through funding of the latter, which so far has been insufficient.  

In 2022 Canada spent 12.2% of its GDP on healthcare and EMS, which is lower than 13.8% in 2020. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Canada's per-capita health spending was below that of the United States, Germany, Switzerland, and other developed countries.  

As the current situation with staff shortages in the EMS sector of the country remains complex, the attraction of foreign skilled personnel in recent years has become one of the priorities for Canada and its government.  

According to some Canadian media reports, currently, there are almost record-high vacancies in the healthcare and EMS sectors of the country. The problem is very complex, and because of a lack of staff, several hospitals were forced to shut down their emergency rooms or reduce other services temporarily earlier this year.  

Already now Canada heavily depends on immigration in its EMS sector, where up to of local personnel are not Canadian-born, while, as part of the country's plans, is further increasing migration flows to both healthcare and EMS sectors. The latter, however, is complicated by the existing problems with obtaining proper licensing from Canadian authorities for foreign-trained medical professionals. 

Foreign Credential Recognition State Program 

The country has already received CAD$90 in additional funding from the Foreign Credential Recognition State Program, a program that aims to remove barriers to the employment of foreign-skilled workers in the country’s EMS and healthcare sectors.  

The government also plans to address another problem in the industry: frequent cases of extra work among Canadian paramedics and insufficient compensation for overtime hours. 

Most local analysts believe that the adopted measures are timely, as  

a further delay in the solution of the existing problems could create conditions of massive strikes of local medical personnel, similar to those, which have been observed in other developed nations, such as the UK.

This is despite the existing Canadian specifics of the organization of EMS, and its high fragmentation throughout provinces and territories across about 100 different health authorities, all with their separate fiefdoms, systems, and private data.  

Still, some experts believe that billions of dollars, which are currently provided will not fix matters if the structural problems are ignored.