Provincial Funding for Ambulance Services

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.