WHEREAS ambulance services are a very essential and critical part of health and safety in Alberta;AND WHEREAS costs for ambulance services have been increasing over the past several years to comply with legislation;AND WHEREAS the provincial Health Summit 99 determined that after acute care, ambulance services received the next highest rating and were considered to be very essential;AND WHEREAS we agree that health is a shared responsibility and that municipal governments and users have thus far paid the way regarding ambulance services;AND WHEREAS several studies over the past five to ten years have repeatedly confirmed the under-funding of ambulance services in Alberta, the importance of ambulance services, and the importance of base funding for all ambulance services;AND WHEREAS municipal governments are being put in a position of increasingly subsidizing the costs of ambulance services because of the revenue shortfall from government-set ambulance rates, which have been unchanged for several years.

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties support the position of working with the Government of Alberta to ensure that provincial funding for ambulance services is elevated to a rate which more accurately reflects the cost of providing the service, and make all efforts necessary to ensure that the increasing costs of providing ambulance services shall not be transferred to municipal governments.